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International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms

ISSN for PRINT: 1521-9437

Institutional price:	$538.00
Issues per year:	4

Best Paper Award Selection - Editorial Board Site

2003, Volume5

102 pages

DOI: 10.1615/InterJMedicMush.v5.i1

Issue price - $128.00

Antitumor Effects of Polysaccharides of Ganoderma lucidum (Curt.:Fr.) P. Karst. (Ling Zhi, Reishi Mushroom) (Aphyllophoromycetideae)

Shiuh-Sheng Lee
Department of Biochemistry, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China

Po-Lei Lee
Department of Biochemistry, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China

Chieh-Fu Chen
National Research Institute of Chinese Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China

Sheng-Yuan Wang
Department of Medical Research and Education, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China

Kuang-Yao Chen
Cancer Therapy Center, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China

ABSTRACT

Ganoderma lucidum has been established to be an antitumor natural product. Hot-water extracts of the mycelium of G. lucidum (GLP) exhibited antitumor effect against fibrosarcoma in male and female C₃H mice and inhibited the metastasis of the tumor to the lung. Moreover, we have fractionated GLP into polysaccharide fraction [GLP(AI)] and nonpolysaccharide fraction. We found that GLP(AI) is the major component to show the in vivo antitumor effect on fibrosarcoma growth in C₃H mice. The effect of PS-G purified from GLP(AI) by Sephadex and ion-exchange column chromatography on the induction of differentiation in leukemic U937 cells was examined. We found that it could stimulate blood mononuclear cells to secrete cytokines, TNF-a, IFN-g, IL-1b, and IL-6, etc., which were both antiproliferative and differentiation-inductive to the leukemic U937 and HL-60 cells. TNF-a and IFN-g, especially, induced apoptosis and differentiation in the treated leukemic cells. Furthermore, antitumor activity of G. lucidum on intraperitioneally implanted Lewis lung carcinoma in syngeneic C57BL/6 mice was investigated. The results showed that GLP significantly increased the lifespan of tumor-implanted mice, when administered intraperioneally alone or in combination with cytotoxic antitumor drugs (adriamycin, fluorouracil, thioguanine, methotrexate, or cisplatin) or a synthetic immunomodulator (imexon). The GLP was not cytotoxic to cultured cells, and the antitumor activity was abolished by pretreatment of mice with cyclosporine. These observations suggest that GLP exerts its antitumor effect mainly through immunopotentiation of the tumor-bearing animals.