Zeitschrift für Pharmazie und pharmazeutische Forschung Offener Zugang

Abstrakt

Paclitaxel–A Drug Successfully Developed from Natural Sources as Breast Cancer Therapy

Eri Amalia1*, Tina Rostinawati2, Yo ppi Iskandar2, Iyan Sopyan1, Sr iwidodo Sriwidodo1, An is Yohana Chaerunisaa1, Muhaimin Muhaimin2

Background: The discovery of breast cancer drugs is continuously conducted through both computational and exploration of natural derivatives to obtain highly selective promising compounds with fewer adverse effects. Despite the difficulties experienced, six naturally derived drugs including paclitaxel have been successfully, continuously developed and approved for breast cancer therapy. Learning for its research would give insight on conducting similar research.

Methods: This article reviewed paclitaxel development stages, including different research types and outcomes, as well as current developments of the drug from reliable sources including science direct, pubmed, WHO, FDA, EMC, and PDB websites using the keywords “paclitaxel”, “IC₅₀ paclitaxel” and “paclitaxel encapsulation”.

Conclusions: This research showed that paclitaxel development began in 1962 following current FDA guidelines. The anticancer activity of the Taxus extract and paclitaxel compound determined through in vitro examination was IC₅₀<50 μg/ml and < 20 μM against several cancer lines, respectively. Paclitaxel was powerful but with limitations in solubility, and its development had continuously been investigated, such as applying nanoparticle encapsulation for efficacy improvement. The development of anticancer drugs from natural sources is promising, e.g. for breast cancer therapy. The compound obtained from in vitro screening must be further examined by following the FDA guidelines. Similarly, continuous study of approved formulations of drugs is important to discover their superior therapeutic efficacy.