Improving the extraction yield of taxanes from Taxus cuspidata needles using cold plasma

Abstract

Taxanes have been widely used as highly effective antitumour drugs to treat cancer. Industrial taxane extraction is generally time-consuming with a relatively low extraction rate, and exploring novel extraction processes is necessary. Cold plasma is a novel nonthermal technology that has been used in food and agriculture fields. However, the application potential of cold plasma to treat Taxus for taxanes extraction remains unproven. In this study, we used cold plasma as a pre-treatment, followed by solidliquid extraction, and investigated cold plasma’s effect on the extraction rate of taxanes from Taxus cuspidata needles. Single-factor experiments showed that the taxanes yield increased with increasing plasma power, treatment time, gas flow, powder size, and loading weight. The response surface (RSM) model and support vector regression (SVR) model were then constructed using the experimental results of the central composite design (CCD) to obtain the optimal pre-treatment conditions. The predicted optimal extraction environments for cold plasma pre-treatment were 310 W of plasma power, 205 s of treatment time, and 1.0 g of loading weight. Under these conditions, a remarkable increase in taxanes yield from 346.20 μg/g (Control) to 507.81 μg/g was observed. The lower water activity (Aw), L* (lightness), and a* (redness) value, as well as increased roughness, were presented in the cold plasma pre-treated samples compared to the control treatment. In addition, energy dispersive spectroscopy assay showed that the percentage of oxygen element in the surface element content of Taxus cuspidata increased after cold plasma treatment. The results of this study demonstrated for the first time that cold plasma could markedly improve the extraction efficiency of taxanes from Taxus cuspidata, thus promoting broader application in the extraction industry.