Aerosol synthesis of macroporous silica adsorbents with high performance in paclitaxel purification from plant cell cultures

Macroporous spherical silica particles having high performance for the purification of paclitaxel were synthesized by spray pyrolysis using polystyrene nanoparticles as a template. In terms of increasing the purity and yield of paclitaxel, the synthesized macroporous silica showed the better performance than mesoporous silica of high surface area as well as commercial sylopute. The generation of macroporous with the sacrifice of losing surface area was proved to be helpful for enhancing the performance of adsorbents for paclitaxel purification. As a result, the high purity (67.3%) and yield (80.0%) of paclitaxel was achieved by using macroporous silica prepared by spray pyrolysis.