Gardens of plant tissue in labs seen as factories for vital drugs

Publication Type:

Newspaper Article

Authors:

Brody, Jane E.

Source:

New York Times, The New York Times Company, New York City, NY (1990)

Call Number:

U90BRO04IDUS

URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/20/science/gardens-of-plant-tissue-in-labs-seen-as-factories-for-vital-drugs.html?smid=pl-share

Keywords:

Taxus brevifolia

Abstract:

Taxol, one of the most promising anti-cancer drugs to be tested in years, comes from the bark of the Pacific yew, a slow-growing evergreen found in a few Northwestern states and Canada. But about 36,000 60-year-old trees would have to be destroyed each year just to treat patients with ovarian cancer, the drug's most exciting role to date. Should the drug's early promise against cancers of the breast, lung and colon hold up, millions of trees would fall each year and the world's natural supply of taxol would soon be gone. Scientists have tried to synthesize the chemical in the laboratory. But 10 years of effort have been futile; taxol's highly complex chemical structure is simply too hard to duplicate. So the researchers have turned to tissue culture, reproducing in the laboratory bark cells that can produce large amounts of taxol. By manipulating plant cells and growing mediums, researchers can create vast laboratory gardens of plant parts that produce important chemicals quickly, cheaply and reliably in a confined space.