The Story of Taxol: Nature and Politics in the Pursuit of an Anti-Cancer Drug

This is not the type of book you take to the beach and cuddle up with. It is more of a historical chronicle of the logistic hurdles that it takes for a molecule to go from a bark extract to clinical trials. The other review of this book is critical of the lack of focus on the mechanism of action of taxol. I think that this criticism is a bit short sided as these types of analyses can easily be found in the scientific literature.I used this book as a companion text to a course I taught titled 'The Chemistry and Biology of Drugs'. And this was the best example of a book that chronicled the ins and out of what it took to to bring taxol to the clinic. If you are looking for pleasure reading about drug discovery 'The Billion Dollar Molecule' is a better example.

Fascinating history of drug development and the blessing of Bristol With a gold mine drug

Very detailed, very much an inside story. Good, though, to see how a drug can go from a hard to obtain natural product to a major cancer treatment...in all of 40 or 50 years. You can see why it costs so much and takes so long.

...I bought this book because some years back I did basic research with this remarkable substance and wanted to learn more about its background.The Story of Taxol is a very scholarly book, with footnotes almost as long as chapters, and extensive literature references. As the subtitle makes clear, the tale is mostly about politics, viz. politics within the National Cancer Institute and other agencies involved in the procurement of this initially natural chemotherapeutic agent. In minute details we are also informed about collections of bark of the pacific yew, the principal raw material for taxol prior to its total synthesis, as well as about the fulfilment or non-fulfilment of collection quotas. Because taxol's mode of action at the cellular and molecular level is completely different from that of other inhibitors of cell division it accounted for much activity in cell biology. The book is silent about this aspect. Whereas It may be a valuable addition to some libraries, overall it clearly offers too little of interest to the individual reader...