Recent advances in the biosynthesis of Taxol / 药学学报

ABSTRACT

Taxol is one of the most potent chemotherapeutic agents known, showing excellent activity against a range of cancers. In addition to anticancer, taxol has the effect of preventing graft arteriosclerosis, antiscaring formation and inhibiting angiogenesis. There are five possible routes to industrialize taxol production isolation from the bark of the yew species, total synthesis, semisynthesis, tissue or cell culture, endophytic fungal fermentation and metabolism engineering. There are at least 14 genes related to the taxol biosynthesis had been cloned from yews and functionally expressed in different hosts. The combinational expression system of taxol makes progress as the clarification of biosynthetic pathway of taxol.