New method of Taxol production has the potential to greatly reduce the cost
Since 1996 Taxol, a growth suppressant has been used, together with carboplatin, a cytotoxic, in the initial chemo treatment of ovarian cancer. Originally extracted from the bark of the Pacific Yew tree, Taxol is the most expensive in terms of raw ingredients of any drug in common use.
The original process required the bark from two trees for each individual treatment killing the tree which took 100 years to mature. Subsequently it has been extracted from the harvested Yew needles at a cost of US$20000/ Kg. These too are in short supply.
Now a biosynthetic process using cloned yeast cells has been developed, thereby ensuring an adequate supply at much less cost. Hopefully this will make this essential treatment more readily available, especially in third world countries.
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