Research team achieves critical step to opening elusive class of compounds to drug discovery
Sunday, November 6, 2011 - 13:30
in Health & Medicine
Taxanes are a family of compounds that includes one of the most important cancer drugs ever discovered, Taxol®, among other cancer treatments. But the difficulty producing these complex molecules in the lab has hampered or blocked exploration of the family for further drug leads. Now, a group of Scripps Research Institute scientists has successfully achieved a major step toward the goal of synthetically producing Taxol® and other complex taxanes on a quest to harness chemical reactions that could enable research on previously unavailable potential drugs.