Plants are an important source of drugs, but the cost of extracting certain medicinal ingredients from plants is high, limiting the promotion and use of these drugs. Researchers from the United Kingdom and South Korea reported recently that they have developed a new technology that uses plant stem cells to produce drugs, which can significantly reduce the extraction costs of medicinal ingredients such as paclitaxel.

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh and colleagues from South Korea reported in a new issue of the journal Nature/Biotechnology that paclitaxel extracted from the bark of yew is widely used as a drug for treating lung cancer and breast cancer, but traditional extraction methods often require Bark stripping is not only costly but also produces byproducts harmful to the environment.

In order to solve this problem, British and Korean researchers have developed new technologies. It is only necessary to isolate and culture the stem cells at the top of the yew meristem, so that it can produce a large amount of paclitaxel. The cost is much lower than the traditional extraction method, and it does not Harmful byproducts can be produced.

Preliminary experimental results show that this technique is not only suitable for extracting paclitaxel from yew, but also for extracting medicinal components from other plants.

Gary Locke, a professor at Edinburgh University who is involved in the study, said that about a quarter of the drugs used today are derived from plants. If this low-cost, environmentally-friendly and safe extraction technology is promoted, it is expected that the medicinal value of plants will be better. Development.