Israeli research: a component of an edible mushroom may help prevent cancer
Pleurotus mushrooms are oyster-like mushrooms that grow in nature usually on tree trunks. They are known to us as delicious edible mushrooms called "Jordan mushrooms", but it turns out that in addition to taste, they also produce a substance that may help in the treatment of cancer. Scientists at the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment of the Hebrew University, Rehovot Campus, examined the effect of the fungus on cancer cells in culture.
They discovered that molecules of a polysaccharide produced by the fungus, alpha-glucan, promote the death of cancer cells in culture. Among other things, they saw the phenomenon in breast cancer and colon cancer cells. In light of the encouraging results, the researchers moved on to research in mice - they assumed that alpha-glucans have anti-inflammatory activity, and therefore used mice whose tumors developed from an inflammatory process. The researchers irrigated the mice with a solution of alpha-glucans extracted from the fungus, and discovered that the alpha-glucans did prevent the inflammatory processes, and also largely prevented the development of cancerous tumors and the formation of metastases - cells that separate from the original tumor and start a new tumor elsewhere in the body. "The glucans form a buffer between the cancer cells, and the intercellular medium and the blood vessels, so they prevent the cancer cells from taking hold of the tissue and preventing the possibility of their proliferation," explains the head of the research team, Prof. Betty Schwartz from the Nutrition and Cancer Laboratory. "They act directly on the cells and also moderate the inflammatory activity that causes the formation of cancer."
Of mice and men
The research was led by Schwartz with the research student - now a doctor - Iris Lavi, and with Prof. Yitzhak Hadar, an expert in mushroom research. The next step in the work, Schwartz says, will be to raise funding for clinical studies, to test whether the alpha-glucan solution can have a similar effect on humans as well. In the meantime, the findings have been published in several scientific journals, and a summary of them will soon be published in a new book on medicines from natural sources.
Related links:
One of the scientific articles about the work - the Journal of Gastroenterology Research
3 תגובות
interesting. But it is equally interesting to find out whether other fungi, which synthesize alpha-glucan (Blastomyces dermatidis, Histoplasma capsulatum, Aspergillus niger...) will cause a similar anti-inflammatory effect.