Abstract: Production of new anticancer drug taxol by plant cell cultures has received an increasing attention.This work studied the kinetics of suspension cultures of Taxus chinensis as our first step of engineering approach to the bioprocess scale up and optimization.The cell growth,utilization of major medium nutrients,oxygen uptake rate,and taxol production were examined on a 250mL flask scale.Our results indicate that the maximum specific growth rate of 0.129/d (based on wet cell weight) was obtained,and the taxol accumulation pattern was found to be mixed growth associated.The maximum production was obtained at the stationary phase.In addition,the effect of addition of V C on the cell cultures was also investigated.