Monday, July 9, 2007

Taxol from yew combats cancer

T he story of paclitaxel (now commonly known under the registered tradename Taxol ) originated in ancient times. Julius Caesar mentioned in his "Gallic Wars" that Catulvolcus committed suicide by consuming extracts from the yew tree. There are also numerous yew1.jpg (21008 bytes)references in folk law to the cancer healing properties of the yew tree. The modern history of the drug taxol began in 1962 when Dr. A. Barclay, working for the U.S. collected bark from the Pacific Yew tree (Taxus brevifolia), pictured opposite, as part of a project aimed at the discovery of new anticancer agents. Interest in the Pacific Yew tree heightened considerably after the discovery of it's activity against a number of leukaemias and solid tumours in the breast, ovary, brain, and lung in humans. This sparked off an intense period of research aimed at isolating the chemical responsible for the yew tree's activity and concluded in 1967 with the isolation of taxol in minute quantities. The amount of taxol that can be extracted from the yew tree is very small. The sacrifice of one 100 year old tree would result in approximately only 350mg of taxol, just about enough for one single dose for a cancer patient.

In 1971 Wall, Wani and coworkers at theeported the molecular structure of taxol (1) on the basis of X-ray crystallographic data.


1: taxol


5 comments:

Amrita said...

Wow Janet so glad you are HOD. Which Institute have you joined?

Janet Jeyapaul said...

The Institute called ATRI - it is not very well known

Janet Jeyapaul said...

I am writing grants at the moment , and only after I receive the grants it can develop further and even then only after all the infrastructural work is done - I have a time span of 3years to get enough funding - Pray i will get it .

Janet Jeyapaul said...

i write the blogs in between the grant writing so it wont be as great as yours - but who can claim their blog is the best. Not me by a long shot - it will always be that way but
with a little help from you I have to see those grants being funded. BTW I am old and feeble eyed now - as I have to be Anands great Aunt and your sister in law . We can never ever be friends ( I think It is Gods will)- I am so old and feeble eyed friendship truly doesnt suit me anymore unless they are Molecular Biologist s that too from an Institute I am familiar with - I have gone through so many changes I cant no longer make myself available to every one - Your blogs are good but I dont read all blogs all the time- just here and there acc to what I am doing

Janet Jeyapaul said...

oops my old mumbai english is slowly creeping back which is not a good or pleasing thing--- see second comment - the it should be ATRI-- chale ga -ATRi is not well known but an ideal position for writing for grant funding.Do you want to join ATRI -its headquarters is in Dharmapuri and it multifaceted- they have a bee farm etc(bee venom has many functions one of which is inhibiting metastasis in cancer)_.I could get you in touch with the organisation if you are indeed
interested . I felt ( previous blog) that lady spoke to my heart - slmost similar situation - if not the same.