Exploration of microbial diversity for the production of Taxol An anticancerous drug from the Taxus spp of the Himachal Pradesh

Abstract

newline Endophytes are the microorganisms resides inside the host plants, create a huge newlinebiodiversity with yet unknown novel natural products, presumed to push forward the newlinefrontiers for the production of valuable compounds like Paclitaxel, Podophyllotoxin, newlineVinblastine and Vincristine etc. Taxol is a chemotherapeutic drug effectively used against newlinehead, neck, breast, lung, bladder, ovary and cervix cancer. The only natural source of taxol newlineis endangered plant Taxus spp. all over the world. Therefore, the present studies deal with newlinethe isolation of taxol producing endophytic fungi from Taxus spp. collected from different newlineareas of Shimla and Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh. Twenty-one different endophytic newlinewere isolated from Taxus spp. collected from Shimla and Kullu district of Himachal newlinePradesh and out of which six isolates showed the presence of taxol production in newlinesubmerged liquid fermentation. The extract was prepared from the isolated fungus using newlineLiquid-Liquid fractionation method. The authenticity of the taxol produced was detected newlineand quantified by TLC, UV-Vis spectroscopy and HPLC analysis respectively and newlinecharacterized by using LC-MS, 1H NMR and FTIR analysis. Further, to check the efficacy newlineand cytotoxic effect of crude taxol, comparative study on human lung cancer cell line newline(A549) was also performed. The crude taxol extracted (5-40 and#956;g/ml) showed a strong newlinecytotoxic activity on lung cancer cell line (A549) by MTT assay. Among the samples, TPF- newline2 showed high anticancer potential (IC50 6.77 ± 1.12 and#956;g/ml). Fungal fermentation in the newlineM1D medium yielded appreciable amount of taxol i.e. 484 mg/L as analyzed by HPLC. newlineDisquisition of the present study suggest that fungus isolated was an excellent alternate newlinesource for taxol supply, and it may become a highly potent strain for the bench scale newlineproduction of this wonder drug. Further, strain may become highly potential and effective newlinealternative method to increase taxol yield by optimizing various fermentation conditions newlineas well as by using recombinant DNA technology, which is urgently required for the newlinecommercial production at industrial level. newlineKeywords: Taxus; endophytes; taxol; anticancer: characterization; cytotoxicity.