Development of a simultaneous extraction and acid hydrolysis process for recovery of paclitaxel from plant cell cultures

•MAE/acid hydrolysis simultaneous process was developed.•Acid hydrolysis broke down a glycosidic bond of glycoside.•The paclitaxel yield was increased by the cleavage of glycoside.•The extraction time was reduced by simultaneous process.

In this study, a microwave-assisted extraction (MAE)/acid hydrolysis simultaneous process was developed for recovering the anticancer agent paclitaxel from plant cell cultures of Taxus chinensis. The optimal pH of the extraction solution (90% aqueous methanol) for hydrolysis was 2.2 at fixed extraction time (6 min), ratio of extraction solution to biomass (1:1, v/w), and extraction temperature (40 °C). In the MAE/acid hydrolysis simultaneous process, the paclitaxel recovery was 2.2-fold higher than in the existing extraction methods. Regarding changes in the content of glycoside (7-xylosyl paclitaxel as sugar-binding paclitaxel) and paclitaxel depending on the inclusion of acid hydrolysis in the MAE process, the content of 7-xylosyl paclitaxel decreased after acid hydrolysis whereas the content of paclitaxel increased. Based on this result, it was confirmed that acid hydrolysis breaks down a glycosidic bond of glycoside (sugar-binding paclitaxel), and so the recovery of paclitaxel increases.