ABSTRACT
The approval of Taxol®* (paclitaxel) for marketing in December of 1992 was the culmination of 30 years of work that began with the collection of Taxus brevifolia in Washington state in 1962. Taxol took 30 years to get to market largely because it was not an obvious winner until the very end, and there were a number of times when it seemed highly likely that it would not be put into development at all or that, once it had been accepted, it would be dropped. The discovery and development of Taxol is a complex story and, to fully understand and appreciate it, one must understand the studies, decisions, problems in development, and questions about Taxol in the context of the times that the work was performed and the technologies available. We want to tell the story of the fine work by many people and organizations who kept it moving on the path to eventual marketing as a useful agent for the treatment of human cancer and the story of the people and circumstances that saved Taxol on many critical occasions.
