Endophytic fungi isolated from medicinal plants: future prospects of bioactive natural products from Tabebuia/Handroanthus endophytes

Abstract

Medicinal plants are a rich source of natural products used to treat many diseases; therefore, they are the basis for a new drug discovery. Plants are capable of generating different bioactive secondary metabolites, but a large amount of botanical material is often necessary to obtain small amounts of the target substance. Nowadays, many medicinal plants are becoming rather scarce. For this reason, it is important to point out the interactions between endophytic microorganisms and the host plant, because endophytes are able to produce highly diverse compounds, including those from host plants that have important biological activities. Thence, this review aims at presenting the richness in bioactive compounds of the medicinal plants from Tabebuia and Handroanthus genera, as well as important aspects about endophyte-plant interactions, with emphasis on the production of bioactive compounds by endophytic fungi, which has been isolated from various medicinal plants for such a purpose. Furthermore, bio-prospection of natural products synthesized by endophytes isolated from the aforementioned genera used in traditional medicine could be used to treat illnesses.