Bristol Industrial Research

Bristol Industrial Research Associates Ltd, (BIRAL), PO Box 2, Portishead, Bristol, S20 9JB, UK, 275 847303... 

Comments on late drafts of chapters were made by a number of the authors colleagues, particularly Dr. W. McCoy (Office of Saline Water), Chapter II Prof. R. M. Fuoss (Yale), Chapter III Prof. R. Stokes (Armidale), Chapter IV Dr. R. Parsons (Bristol), Chapter VII Prof. A. N. Frumkin (Moscow), Chapter VIII Dr. H. Wroblowa, Chapter X Prof. R. Staehle (Ohio State), Chapter XI. One of the authors (A.K.N.R.) wishes to acknowledge his gratitude to the authorities of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India, and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, for various facilities, not the least of which were extended leaves of absence. He wishes also to thank his wife and children for sacrificing many precious hours which rightfully belonged to them. 

The cell culture process was licensed in May 1995 by Bristol-Meyer Squibb, which in 1998 designated 25 million for development of an FDA-approved commercial process. Many academic and industrial research groups around the world are pursuing plant cell culture routes of production [76-86]. 

Riaz Khan, Ph.D., Industrial research chemist. Education at Bristol Univ. Joined staff of Tate Lyle, Ltd., in 1968. Many papers on carbohydrate reactions and analyses. Philip Lyle Memorial Research Laboratory, Tate Lyle, Ltd., P.O. Box 68, Reading, Berkshire RG6 2BX, England. 

Some chemical companies spend a very high percentage of sales on R D expenditures. Almost all of these companies are pharmaceutical companies, that portion of the industry that is highly competitive technically and requires substantial basic research to remain competitive. These types of companies can spend large percentages of their sales on R D Pfizer, 17% Bristol-Myers Squibb, 9% Eli Lilly, 18%. Most general large U.S. chemical companies spend a smaller portion of their sales on R D Du Pont, 6% Dow, 5% Rohm and Haas, 4% Eastman Chemical, 4%. 

Since the bottleneck on the clinical trial for taxol was in the supply, the NCI turned in 1989 to industrial partners, and issued a request for a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, and selected Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) in 1991 as the partner in taxol development. BMS would take responsibility for the short-term supply of taxol, and NCI would sponsor research to deal with long-term supply. BMS collected 750,000 lbs of dried T. brevifolia bark from 38,000 trees during the 1991 growing season, sufficient to yield 25 kg of pure taxol to treat about 12,000 cancer patients. Hauser Chemical Research of Boulder, Colorado, was overseeing collection of yew bark and processing of the bark to extract taxol. BMS prepared the final dosage formulation and delivered it to the NCI for use in clinical studies. 

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