Wani, Mansukh

Camptothecin (43) was first isolated by Monroe Wall and Mansukh Wani in 1966, after ethanolic extracts of Camptotheca acuminata, a tree native to China, showed unusual and potent antitumor activity (63). Starting with 19 kg of dried wood and bark. Wall and Wani painstakingly purified the principal active component with a combination of hot solvent extraction, an 11-stage Craig countercurrent partition process, silica gel chromatography, and crystallization. Camptothecin was characterized as a novel pentacyclicalkaloid, present as j ust 0.01 % w/w of the stem bark of C ax umi-... 

The diterpenoid 21 was isolated from the bark of the western yew, Taxus hrevifolia Nutt, in the late 1960s by Monroe Wall and Mansukh Wani as part of a systematic search for anti cancer compounds from plant sources. 

The most enthusiastic reports concern the diterpenoids paclitaxel, Taxol (from Taxus brevifolia) and docetaxel, Taxotere (from Taxus baccata) having unique tri- or tetracyclic 20 carbon skeletons extracted from the bark of yew. This tree was known as a toxic plant for animals and humans for centuries. Monroe E. Wall and Mansukh C. Wani, at the Research Triangle Park (Chapel Hill, USA), identified the active principle of the yew tree in 1971. In 1979, Susan Horwitz of the Department of Molecular Pharmacology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine (New York) suggested that paclitaxel s mechanism of action was different from that of any previously known cytotoxic agent. She observed an increase in the mitotic index of P388 cells and an inhibition of human HeLa and mouse fibroblast cells in the G2 and M phases of the cell cycle. 

Paclitaxel is a mitotic inhibitor used in cancer chemotherapy. It was discovered in the US National Cancer Institute program in 1967 when Moiuoe E. WaU and Mansukh C. Wani isolated it from the bark of the Pacific yew tree, Taxus brevifolia, and named it taxol. When it was developed commercially, the generic name was changed to paclitaxel. 

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