Integrated system for paclitaxel production from endophytic fungus, Neopestalotiopsis clavispora ASU1 and subsequent extraction of chitosan from fungal biomass wastes

Nowadays, breast cancer is considered to be one of the most prevalent diseases worldwide, this initiated interest and growing demand for taxol production in large quantities. The limited availability of traditional taxol production from the Pacific yew trees has encouraged research into the development of taxol production from alternative sources. Thus, the current study aimed to investigate the chemopreventive effect of paclitaxel derived from endophytic fungus Neopestalotiopsis clavispora ASU1. The endophytic fungus Neopestalotiopsis clavispora ASU1(KY624416) showed potent productivity of paclitaxel recording 100.6 µg/l which confirmed by HPLC, LC/Ms-Ms and FTIR analyses. In vitro, the extracted fungal taxol exerted a significant cytotoxic effect (P< 0.05) at 300 nM, revealed that the increase in paclitaxel concentration induces increased cell death. Furthermore, the present study provides a promising approach for coupling paclitaxel production technology by endophytic fungus N. clavispora with chitosan production from residual fungal biomass resulting from taxol extraction and therefore improve the feasibility and commercialization of taxol production. The chitosan yield represented 5.94% of residual fungal dry biomass. Also, fungal chitosan was characterized for the degree of deacetylation (DD) (54.60%), FTIR spectroscopy, reducing power activity (0.263±0.051 mg/ml) may be attributed to hydroxyl groups (OH), and amine groups. These results confirmed that fungi are promising alternative sources for chitosan with superior physiochemical characteristics for food and medical prospective applications.