Taxol, originally extracted from the bark of the western yew, Taxus brevifolia, is reportedly the first of a new class of anti-cancer agents. It acts by promoting and irreversibly stabilizing microtubule assembly, thus interfering with the dynamic processes required for cell viability and multiplication. With the aim of using immunological techniques to study the mechanism of action of taxol, a...

Taxol is a natural plant product which has antimitotic activity. It is currently being investigated for use both as a cancer chemotherapy agent and as a tool to investigate microtubule involvement with various cellular functions. In the studies reported here, the actions of taxol on cultured adrenal medullary cells are compared to those of two other taxanes, baccatin III and 19-hydroxybaccatin ...

Taxol, a novel antimicrotubule agent that enhances tubulin polymerization and microtubule stability, was administered to adults with refractory leukemias as a 24-h i.v. infusion in a Phase I study. The primary objectives were to determine the maximum tolerated dose of taxol administered on this schedule to patients with acute leukemias and describe the nonhematological toxicities which became d...

Caveolin-1 (CAV-1), which is an oncoprotein and a tumor suppressor, is highly expressed in normal osteoblasts. Although researchers have investigated its role in human osteosarcoma, the mechanism of caveolin-1 action in osteosarcoma remains unknown. In the present study, Saos-2 and U-2 OS cells were cultured with a continuous induction protocol of gradually increasing Taxol concentration for 6 ...

Microtubule integrity is important in cardio-protection, and microtubule disruption has been implicated in the response to ischemia in cardiac myocytes. However, the effects of Taxol, a common microtubule stabilizer, are still unknown in ischemic ventricular arrhythmias. The arrhythmia model was established in isolated rat hearts by regional ischemia, and myocardial infarction model by ischemia...

PURPOSE This study was undertaken to examine the role of the insulin-like growth factor (IGF) signaling pathway in the response of ovarian cancer cells to Taxol and to evaluate the significance of this pathway in human epithelial ovarian tumors. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN The effect of Taxol treatment on AKT activation in A2780 ovarian carcinoma cells was evaluated using antibodies specific for phos...

BACKGROUND Taxol is an effective antineoplastic agent, originally extracted from the bark of Taxus brevifolia with a low yield. Many attempts have been made to produce Taxol by chemical synthesis, semi-synthesis and plant tissue cultures. However, to date, the availability of this compound is not sufficient to satisfy the commercial requirements. The aim of the present work was to produce suspe...

Pestalotiopsis microspora occurs as a range of strains in bald cypress, Taxodium distichum. The organisms live as endophytes in the bark, phloem and xylem, and isolates show differences in cultural and microscopic characteristics on common laboratory media. Many of these fungi make taxol as determined by the reactivity of partially purified culture extracts with specific monoclonal antibodies a...

BACKGROUND Extraction and investigation of TAXOL from Pestalotiopsis breviseta (Sacc.) using protein docking, which is a computational technique that samples conformations of small molecules in protein-binding sites. Scoring functions are used to assess which of these conformations best complements the protein binding site and active site prediction. MATERIALS AND METHODS Coelomycetous fungi ...

Taxol, a mitotic spindle toxin, was found to selectively inhibit the proliferation of Leishmania donovani in vitro at nanomolar concentrations with an IC50 of 35 nM. Concentrations of taxol as high as 50 nM, however, did not affect J774A.1 murine macrophages. Taxol (30 nM) also inhibited amastigote multiplication within a J774A.1 macrophage cell line when used in a 10-day experiment. It resulte...