Taxanes from the bark of Taxus brevifolia

Large-scale processing of the chloroform extract of the bark of Taxus brevifolia by reversed phase column chromatography on C-18 bonded silica using acetonitrile/water mixtures, gave a taxane-rich fraction which emerged just after the elution of paclitaxel. Re-chromatography of this fraction yielded 15 taxane constituents, many of which were obtained in crystalline from, and variously belonging to the 11(15 --> 1)-abeotaxane group, taxinine J group, brevifoliol group and those with an oxygenation pattern at the 14 position. Five of these were new and several others were isolated for the first time from this source. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.