Fungus produces cancer drug
From San Francisco, at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Several varieties of fungi that attack hazelnuts produce high quantities of the widely used cancer drug paclitaxel, researchers report. Companies currently extract the powerful but expensive drug from the bark of yew trees.
Since the early 1990s, doctors have been using paclitaxel, sold under the brand name Taxol, to fight cancers of the lung, ovary, and breast, and some other tissues. However, since paclitaxel comes from slow-growing trees, the drug is in limited supply.