Microwave-Assisted Extraction of Taxanes from Taxus Biomass

A method is presented for the extraction of the taxane class of natural products, including paclitaxel, from Taxus needles using microwave-assisted extraction (MAE). Various temperatures, times, and organic solvents for the MAE procedure were investigated to optimize the efficiency of the extraction. The effects of biomass to solvent ratio and the water content of the system on taxane recovery were also determined. Under appropriate MAE conditions using 95% ethanol, an extract of the needles was obtained which was equivalent to that produced by a conventional extraction method. The conventional method consisted of an overnight shake of 5 g of needles in 100 mL of methanol at ambient temperature. Thus, with optimized parameter settings, MAE was found to reduce considerably both extraction time and solvent consumption, while maintaining qualitative and quantitative taxane recovery relative to traditional solid/liquid extraction methods.