ReviewNatural product reports2023
From plant to cancer drug: lessons learned from the discovery of taxol.
Review in Natural product reports, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 43 citations in OpenAlex.
- Special Issue "Anticancer Drug Discovery Based on Natural Products".International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Breast cancer pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment: a comprehensive review.Frontiers in oncology · 2026Review
- Design and Analysis of Untargeted Metabolomics Experiments.Current protocols · 2025Article
- Adverse Reactions to Taxanes in Premedicated Cancer Patients: A Prospective Observational Study.Cureus · 2025Article
- Accepting the Legitimacy of Difference: Tools to Support the Decolonisation of Human Research Ethics in Western Health Research.Nursing open · 2025Review
- Editorial for Special Issue "Phytochemicals in Cancer Chemoprevention and Treatment".Current issues in molecular biology · 2025Article
- Anticancer activity ofHeliyon · 2025Article
- Cynaropicrin induces the apoptosis of colorectal cancer cells by elevating reactive oxygen species and activating the JNK/p38 MAPK.American journal of cancer research · 2025Article
- Eupalinolide B suppresses pancreatic cancer by ROS generation and potential cuproptosis.iScience · 2024Article
- Paclitaxel - a Product of Fungal Secondary Metabolism or an Artefact?Planta medica · 2024Review
- Role of MARK2 in the nervous system and cancer.Cancer gene therapy · 2024Review
- Marine-Derived Leads as Anticancer Candidates by Disrupting Hypoxic Signaling through Hypoxia-Inducible Factors Inhibition.Marine drugs · 2024Review
- Anticancer Drug Discovery Based on Natural Products: From Computational Approaches to Clinical Studies.Biomedicines · 2024Review
- Paucatalinone A from Paulownia Catalpifolia Gong Tong Elicits mitochondrial-mediated cancer cell death to combat osteosarcoma.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Many researchers in the natural product sciences dream of discovering a successful drug. For almost all of us, this dream will never be realized. Among the heroes of our past, though, there is a team whose efforts led to the discovery of not one but two new drugs. Dr Monroe Wall and Dr Mansukh Wani isolated and solved the structures for taxol and camptothecin, plant-based compounds that continue to play a critical role in cancer therapy today. Since the 1960s and 1970s when Wall, Wani and collaborators did their seminal work, there have been tremendous technological advances in the natural product sciences. With access to most sophisticated technology, it might be expected that the rate of discovery of new drugs from plants and other sources would have sped up. However, this has not come to pass. Why is this? Is it that the promise of new drug candidates from plant-based sources has been exhausted? Has our fascination with new technologies and with the promise of the genomics revolution caused us to stop investing effort and resources in the practices that are proven to yield success? With this Viewpoint, we share the story of taxol's discovery, highlighting critical challenges that were overcome and considering their relevance to botanical natural products drug discovery today. We hope that consideration of lessons learned from the past will help fuel success by researchers currently studying plants with the goal of discovering promising therapeutic leads.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.