Production of Taxol Using Immobilized Plant Cell Reactor

Although taxol, paclitaxel, is one of the most promising anticancer drugs, the supply of taxol hasmarket demands. To date taxol production is limited and dependent on extraction from bark of yew treChemical synthesis of taxol gives low yield, semi- synthetic production requires a very large supplycell cultures in batch reactors provide low productivity. The overall goal of our project is to devecontinuous plant cell culture process that will provide sufficient taxol for wide- spread human therovercomes the limitations of typical plant cell cultures by separating the immobilized cell mass intchanneling while maintaining high cell density and a uniform oxygen environment. Preliminary resultssystem can give at least 20 fold enhancement in volumetric productivity compared to T. brevifolia baat one-half the cost. Phase I research will be focused on testing the technical and economical feasitaxol reactor, including immobilization efficiency, effect of elicitation on immobilized cells, andcells in long term operation. Phase II will explore scale-up of the immobilized system capable of prand develop continuous separation process. In Phase III, we will perform full scale production and ctaxol.