Available online at www.derpharmachemica.com Scholars Research Library Der Pharma Chemica, 2010, 2(2): 109-115 (http://derpharmachemica.com/archive.html) ISSN 0975-413X 109 www.scholarsresearchlibrary.com Estimation of Paclitaxel drugs by HPLC method T. S. Renuga Devi* and S. Gayathri PG Department of Physics, Women’s Christian College, Chennai, India ______________________________________________________________________________ Abstract Paclitaxel is an anti-leukemic, anti-tumor or in general an anti-neoplastic agent. It was first isolated from the bark of the pacific Yew tree, Taxus breviofolia. Paclitaxel drug is used to treat ovarian, breast and lung cancers. Many pharmaceutical drugs have been analyzed using High Performance Liquid Chromotography method (HPLC). Pharmaceutical manufacturers must maintain tight quality control of their products, and routinely use chromatographic methods for analysis of medications. In the present work, analysis of Paclitaxel drugs such as Nanoxel and Oncotaxel are done by HPLC method. Oncotaxel is widely used chemotherapy agent that is known to have substantial antitumor activity used with a castor oil based solvent, cremophor EL. Whereas, Nanoxel is a polymeric nanoparticle drug delivery agent based on the principle of Nanotechnology and is a cremophor free soluble formulation. HPLC analysis of Paclitaxel drugs was carried out on Shimadzu prominence C 18 column phenomenex Gemini (250×4.6mm, 5m) with KH 2 PO 4 -Acetonitrile (60:40) as the mobile phase and flow rate of 2ml/min at UV detection wavelength of 230nm. The HPLC column separated the basic anti-tumor drug and impurities with good resolution, peak shape and efficiency. The HPLC column was calibrated for peak area at five different concentrations. As the concentration increases the peak area also increases. A plot of mean area versus concentration gave a linear relationship. The linearity coefficient for Nanoxel and Oncotaxel was found to be 0.9997 and 0.9996 respectively. The developed method was found to be reliable and precise for the analysis of Paclitaxel drugs. Key words: Paclitaxel, HPLC. _____________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION Paclitaxel is a natural product with antitumor activity. TAXOL (paclitaxel) is obtained via a semi-synthetic process from T a x u s b a c c a t a . The chemical name for paclitaxel is 5 beta,20-Epoxy-1,2a,4,7 beta,10 beta,13 alpha-hexahydroxytax-11-en-9-one 4,10-diacetate 2-