Lignans are a widely distributed class of natural products with a wide range of physiological functions and of great medicinal importance. Etoposide and teniposide are two clinically applied cytostatics. They are prepared chemically from podophyllotoxin. This atyltetralin lactone lignan is isolated from the plants Podophyllum hexandrum and P. peltatum collected from the wild, as its chemical synthesis is possible but not economic. Due to the intensive collection of these plants in recent times and its slow growth there is a great demand for an alternative supply of the drug material (1—3). Cell suspension cultures may be such an alternative source and can serve for further biosynthetic studies. The genus Lirium and especially the section Syllinum is known to contain aryltetralin lignans (4—9). Here we report on the initiation of suspension cultures of Linum nodiflorum, their growth characteristics and the main lignans identified.

Callus and suspension cultures were established using stand-ard methods from seeds of Linum nodiflorum originating from the Krim (Ukrainia) and supplied by the Institut fur Pflanzen-genetik und l< ulturpflanzenforschung, Gatersleben (Ger-many). The cells were cultivated as described in (9). Lignan aglycones were extracted and identified by 1H-NMR and quantified by HPLC similar as decribed in (9) as modified in (10).