New insights into the antifungal activity of Taxus baccata L

Taxus baccata L., yew, is dioecious, small to medium-sized evergreen tree,native to Europe, Africa and Asia, but it is cultivated worldwide because of itsornamental features. It is long known that all parts of yew (except for aril) aretoxic, due to the alkaloid taxine. Nevertheless, some parts of yew tree can beused to treat cancer and as antimicrobial agents. Unlike its antibacterialproperties, antifungal activity of T. baccata is poorly investigated. In thisresearch, antifungal activity of yew methanolic and aqueous extracts was testedagainst Candida albicans ATCC 10231, Aspergillus brasiliensis ATCC 16404,and Ascosphaera apis MUCL 30769, through the agar well diffusion method.Leaves, bark and reproductive structures extracts were prepared separately formale and female plants. Unlike the aqueous, methanolic extracts caused variabledegree of fungal growth inhibition. The strongest inhibition was observed in theactivity of the aril extract against A. brasiliensis and C. albicans, with the activityof the male bark extract against A. apis following close. Considering theemerging multidrug resistance in C. albicans, an interesting finding is theinhibition of this species by all tested methanolic extracts, which is significantlystronger in comparison to the inhibition by standard antimycotic solution.According to the available data, male reproductive structures of this species werenot tested earlier for their antifungal activity, and our study showed high level ofantifungal activity of methanolic microstrobili extract. The realized researchindicates great antifungal potential of T. baccata, which should be furtherconfirmed by more comprehensive studies.