Chapter 16 - The use of subcritical water associated with fermentative process to obtain biocompounds of interest to pharmaceutical industry

Abstract

During the last decades, the interest in bioactive compounds, whether secondary metabolites from plant or originating from their primary metabolism, has increased substantially. This is mainly due to the “techno-functional” and “bio-functional” attributes of these molecules already evident in many international researches. These benefits drive the nutraceutical and functional compounds market to increasingly seek extraction and separation techniques considered innovative, effective, and preferably green, capable of making these valuable compounds available for application in the food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic sectors. In this sense, this chapter describes the application of subcritical water and fermentation processes as a promising alternative for the extraction and production, respectively, of low and medium polarity compounds due to the great potential of these techniques to make available to the consumer market even more valuable compounds such as antibiotics, antioxidants, vitamins, and others.