Paclitaxel can be produced in high yield and with a high degree of purify from plant cell cultures of Taxus chinensis. The complete purification method was systematically established and described. This method was an efficient procedure for the purification of paclitaxel from crude paclitaxel, consisting or reverse-phase chromatography, followed by a normal-phase chromatography. The two-stage HPLC purification scheme serves as an effective and economical approach for resolving paclitaxel from complex mixtures of taxoids, with high purify (>99%) and low impurities (<0.1%). The process is readily scalable to a pilot plant and eventually to a production environment where multikilogram quantities of material are expected to be produced. The process has been optimized to minimize solvent usage, complexity, and operating costs.