Recovery of taxol from the extract of Taxus cuspidate callus cultures withAl2O3 chromatography

In this study, we reported a chromatographic protocol using C-18 silica gel phase and basic Al2O3 phase to research the creating and recovery of taxol from the extract of Taxus cuspidate callus cultures. With the cleaning up by basic Al2O3 chromatography, the content of taxol determined in our exper iment was increased greatly. The main source of increasing taxol concentrat ion was the isomerization of 7-epi-taxol to taxol; taxol could also be deco mposed to baccatin III and 10-deacetylbaccatin III in the Al2O3 column. At the optimized conditions, the total recovery of taxol from the extract was more than 160%.