Taxol anticancer medicine is one prominent example of plant- based anticancer drugs.
Herbal medicine practitioners often present case studies as evidence of an herbal medicine's efficacy in treating a patient or a group of patients. Patients and caregivers too often encounter anecdotal case studies cited in the literature as evidence of an herb or herb combination's efficacy in providing relief.
The drug discovery process is time-consuming and complex. Researchers and manufacturers of herbal medicine are often poorly funded and cash-strapped. They lack the necessary resources to undertake the drug discovery process. Most herbal medicines available today do not carry approval (e.g., certification from a leading drug regulator such as the US FDA).
The journey from discovering a potential drug to the emergence of one that doctors can prescribe to patients is long and arduous. Most herbal medicine formulators lack the technical skills and financial support to undergo this process.
Still, the quest for discovering new medicine has continued, leading to some remarkable molecules that are helping medicine today fight cancer. Many of these drugs are plant-based. The prominent plant-based anticancer agents are sulforaphane, paclitaxel (taxol), epipodophyllotoxin, vincristine, vinblastine, vinorelbine, vindesine, vinflunine, pomiferin, epigallocatechin-3-gallate, combretastatin A-4 phosphate, roscovitine, flavopiridol, and noscapine.
Let me present an overview of Taxol, a popular anti-cancer medicine.
Botanical overview of Taxol anticancer medicine
Paclitaxel, also known as Taxol, is a compound derived from the bark and needles of the Pacific yew tree (Taxus brevifolia). This evergreen tree, usually between 5 and 15 meters tall, belongs to the Taxaceae family and is a long-lived understorey tree of the US Pacific Northwest. It is a slow-growing plant. The bark becomes harvestable only when the tree is 100 years old. Overexploitation for taxol is impacting tree numbers.
The yew trees are the primary natural source of paclitaxel. Other species, like hazelnuts (Corylus avellana), contain small amounts of the compound. Endophytic fungi that live within the yew trees have also been identified as potential sources of paclitaxel. This discovery offers a possible way to cultivate the compound without directly harvesting the yew tree bark.
Most current production of paclitaxel relies on semi-synthetic methods. A precursor compound extracted from the yew is chemically modified to produce the final drug.
In 1962, Dr Monroe Wall and Mansukh Wani discovered that extracts from the Pacific yew were toxic to living cells. The compound isolated from the tree bark was called paclitaxel. The compound is a promising addition to the current cancer treatment therapies available.
Prominent scientific studies in support of Taxol anticancer medicine
Significant activity was reported in patients with advanced ovarian or breast cancer and other types of tumors. The drug has the activity of salvage or initial therapy, alone or in combination with currently used compounds against many cancers. Paclitaxel can be considered a first-line agent in women with ovarian cancer and a second-line agent for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer if doxorubicin is ineffective. (Spencer, C M et al., 1994; Singla, A K et al., 2002)
Paclitaxel's action appears to be twofold: it prevents cancer cell proliferation, and at higher concentrations, the drug was seen to prevent the genes from triggering cancer. (Blagosklonny M V et al., 1999) Formulations that enable the delivery of paclitaxel nanoparticles with improved effectiveness were developed (Mu L et al., 2003).
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