Paclitaxel has a long way to go

Recently, the Ministry of Finance and the State Administration of Taxation jointly announced that, with the approval of the State Council, some export tax rebates for commodities will be cancelled from July 15, 2010 Among them, paclitaxel is the only pharmaceutical product It is reported that the commodities adjusted by the export tax rebate policy include 6 categories such as steel and non-ferrous metal processing materials, involving 406 tax numbers Zhang Yansheng, director of the Institute of Foreign Economic Research of the national development and Reform Commission, said that the cancellation of the export tax rebate policy for some products was actually a policy adjustment that the global financial crisis lagged behind and the country continued to promote the transformation of economic growth mode "This tax rebate adjustment has little impact on the export enterprises of taxol," said Gao Xuan, the sword of environmental protection Luo Yang, director of the traditional Chinese Medicine Department of the medical insurance chamber of Commerce, said in an interview with the medical economic news Reporters learned that the domestic export of paclitaxel mainly for medicinal purposes, is a high value-added product According to the data from health.com, the unit price of natural paclitaxel per kilogram ranges from US $40000 to US $50000, while the price of semi synthetic paclitaxel is about US $20000 From the perspective of export price, the cancellation of tax rebate will not have a great impact on the export revenue of enterprises In addition, "paclitaxel belongs to" two high and one capital "products The move of the Ministry of finance is mainly a policy guidance from the perspective of resources, so as to show the state's attitude towards resource products." Luo Yang further analysis In fact, as one of the most popular raw materials of natural anticancer drugs in the world in recent 20 years, the development of paclitaxel products has been controversial by environmentalists It is reported that paclitaxel is a diterpenoid compound extracted from Taxus Clinical trials show that paclitaxel has a good effect on ovarian cancer, breast cancer and non-small cell lung cancer Data shows that in 2007, the turnover of paclitaxel APIs in the international pharmaceutical market was US $195 million According to the prediction of foreign pharmaceutical industry, by 2012, the total output of paclitaxel in the world will reach 1040 kg, with an annual demand growth rate of 10% The reporter learned that the taxol sold at present can be divided into two categories according to different sources of raw materials The first kind is the medicament which is directly extracted from the bark of Pacific yew According to this method, about 7000kg bark is needed to produce 1kg pure taxol product, which is equivalent to cutting down 2000-2500 Taxus trees with more than 100 years old This situation caused fierce protests from environmental protection organizations in various countries Under the pressure of environmental protection, under the premise of technological innovation, after 2000, many countries including China have adopted the "branch extraction semi synthesis" method to produce paclitaxel API In other words, the intermediate material of taxol - "10 berry gibberelline" was extracted from European ornamental Taxus twigs, and then the taxol analogue - polyene taxol was synthesized with benzoyl group In addition, Taxus cell culture is still being used to produce paclitaxel APIs in the United States, but there is no news of large-scale production So far, the production of taxol raw materials is still the largest in the world In China, as early as the "Eighth Five Year Plan" period, yew resources protection, development and utilization projects have been included in the national Spark plan In 1995, Taxus chinensis was listed as one of the first class protected plants, but after several years of disordered development and utilization, its resources are still very scarce With the gradual introduction of foreign protection laws and regulations, China has gradually become one of the exporting countries of paclitaxel raw materials in the United States since the late 1990s The reporter learned that the clinical use of paclitaxel is mainly injection, each of which is 30ml in size and expensive, so the amount of paclitaxel used in the world is not large According to the export data, the quantity of taxol exported by domestic enterprises is generally stable, and even has a downward trend in recent years According to the customs data, the number of domestic paclitaxel export enterprises is stable at about 20 In 2009, China exported 164kg of taxol, down 10% from 185kg in 2008 From the perspective of export flow, domestic taxol is mainly transferred to several major pharmaceutical factories in Europe and America through Hong Kong, China, and a small amount is sold to India Luo Yang analyzed that the decrease of taxol export in recent years is related to the characteristics of its resource products Affected by the growth cycle, there are no successful examples of artificial cultivation of Taxus in China In addition, there are still many uncertain factors whether the extraction efficiency of planted Taxus can be compared with that of wild Taxus On the other hand, attracted by the high profit prospect of taxol market, in recent years, China has opened up artificial cultivation bases for Taxus, and various investment projects for Taxus cultivation have also been launched According to some data, at present, there are more than 100000 Mu cultivation bases of Taxus chinensis plantation in southern China, mainly in Sichuan, Yunnan and Mingxi, Fujian In 1996, the Institute of medicine of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, in cooperation with the Ministry of forestry and the Canadian plant source company, introduced 20000 Taxus mandiana seedlings from Canada and settled in the state-owned forest farm in Sichuan The reporter learned that at present, all Taxus species planted in Sichuan Province are of this variety, which is characterized by high taxol content, but slow growth rate The Taxus chinensis var mairei is planted in Mingxi, Fujian Province Although the planting scale is large, the taxol content is very low, and the extraction cost is also increased accordingly The future market is not optimistic In view of this, some insiders told reporters that under the guidance of the national export policy, due to the limited raw materials of Taxus plants, enterprises cannot produce at full capacity, so it is uncertain whether the total amount of domestic taxol will grow rapidly in the future.