To remove entities of string:
Just use the function html_entity_decode
$dec = html_entity_decode( 'Recebido por estagiários do projeto Memória' );
If you need to specify a charset, use the third parameter:
html_entity_decode( 'estagiários', ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8' );
See working on IDEONE.
More details in the manual:
http://php.net/manual/en/function.html-entity-decode.php
To remove tags of string:
You have the option to remove tags using strip_tags
$dec = strip_tags( 'do <b>projeto<b>' );
See working on IDEONE.
More details in the manual:
http://php.net/manual/en/function.strip-tags.php
Related: HTML Special Character Encoder and Decoder and How to solve search problem with accented words
– Guilherme Nascimento