A brief history of taxol

Abstract

Traditional application of plant in folk medicine is a base for discovery of new active chemical substances. In the second half of 20th century, significant antitumor activity of extract from bark of the Yew tree was recognized. The compound that was responsible for this kind of properties has called taxol and had structure of diterpene with acyl groups. Low availability forced researchers to find different ways of taxol gaining. In the further years, many synthetic and semi-synthetic methods were developed. Nowadays, biotechnological methods with use of cell suspension cultures are introduced.