Undiscovered Amazon drugs could be valued at $215 billion, analysis finds

A London-based group called Zero Carbon Analytics estimates tropical forests could hold a median $714 billion in potential commercial value from undiscovered drugs derived from flowering plants, with the Amazon alone accounting for roughly $215 billion, about 30 percent of the total. The logic rests on history: three in four cancer drugs approved between 1940 and 2014 came from or were inspired by natural compounds, and an estimated 99 percent of plant chemicals remain unscreened.

Deforestation since 2001 has already put an estimated $86 billion of that global value at risk, according to the analysis, with some endemic Amazon species potentially gone before they were ever catalogued. Brazilian officials note less than 10 percent of the country's biodiversity is known to science, hampered by thin funding for Amazon-based research and vast unexplored interior land.

Researchers interviewed by Mongabay caution that commercial value only matters if it translates into consent, knowledge-sharing, and benefit for the Indigenous communities whose traditional knowledge often points scientists toward useful plants in the first place. Brazil's own case in point: captopril, a blood pressure drug developed from venom research at a Brazilian university, earned neither Brazil nor the university anything, because researchers published before patenting.

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