Research Use
Aside from its direct clinical use, paclitaxel is used extensively in biological and biomedical research as a microtubule stabilizer. In vitro assays involving microtubules, such as motility assays, generally rely on paclitaxel to maintain microtubule integrity in the absence of the various nucleating factors and other stabilizing elements found in the cell. For example, it is used for in vitro tests of drugs that aim to alter the behavior of microtubule motor proteins, or for studies of mutant motor proteins. Paclitaxel is sometimes used for in vivo studies as well; it can be fed to test organisms, such as fruit flies, or injected into individual cells, to inhibit microtubule disassembly or to increase the number of microtubules in the cell. Paclitaxel induces remyelination in a demyelinating mouse in vivo and inhibits hPAD2 in vitro though its methyl ester side chain did not. Angiotech Pharmaceuticals Inc. began phase II clinical trials in 1999 as a multiple sclerosis treatment but in 2002, reported that the results showed no statistical significance.
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