Duane Roth Award Lecture
A Story of Drug Development: Taxol®, Tubulin and Tumors
Susan Band Horwitz, PhD Distinguished Professor, Department of Molecular Pharmacology
Rose C. Falkenstein Chair in Cancer Research
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Susan Band Horwitz, PhD Distinguished Professor, Department of Molecular Pharmacology
Rose C. Falkenstein Chair in Cancer Research
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Dr. Horwitz has a continuing interest in natural products as a source of new drugs for the treatment of cancer. Her contributions span several decades of research and encompass agents which have served as prototypes for some of our most important drugs that are currently in clinical use. She made major contributions to our understanding of the mechanisms of action of camptothecin, the epipodophyllotoxins and bleomycin. However, Dr. Horwitz’s most seminal research contribution has been in the development of Taxol®, a drug isolated from the yew plant, Taxus brevifolia.
Dr. Horwitz and her co-workers demonstrated that Taxol®’s antimimotic effects were due to a novel interaction between the drug and microtubules that resulted in stabilized polymers. Dr. Horwitz’s pioneering investigations and perceptive analysis identified Taxol® as a prototype for a new class of antitumor drugs. Although no one was interested in Taxol® when she began her studies, today it is an important antitumor drug approved by the FDA for the treatment of ovarian, breast and lung carcinomas. Dr. Horwitz's research played an important role in encouraging the development of Taxol® by the National Cancer Institute. The drug has since been given to over a million patients.
