Anticancer Activity of Amauroderma rude

Chunwei Jiao,Haoran Li,Xiang-Min Li,Hua-Mei Zhong,Yi-Zhen Xie,Mian-Hua Cai,Hong-Hui Pan,Xiangling Yang,Burton B Yang,William B Coleman

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0066504

Abstract

More and more medicinal mushrooms have been widely used as a miraculous herb for health promotion, especially by cancer patients. Here we report screening thirteen mushrooms for anti-cancer cell activities in eleven different cell lines. Of the herbal products tested, we found that the extract of Amauroderma rude exerted the highest activity in killing most of these cancer cell lines. Amauroderma rude is a fungus belonging to the Ganodermataceae family. The Amauroderma genus contains approximately 30 species widespread throughout the tropical areas. Since the biological function of Amauroderma rude is unknown, we examined its anti-cancer effect on breast carcinoma cell lines. We compared the anti-cancer activity of Amauroderma rude and Ganoderma lucidum, the most well-known medicinal mushrooms with anti-cancer activity and found that Amauroderma rude had significantly higher activity in killing cancer cells than Ganoderma lucidum. We then examined the effect of Amauroderma rude on breast cancer cells and found that at low concentrations, Amauroderma rude could inhibit cancer cell survival and induce apoptosis. Treated cancer cells also formed fewer and smaller colonies than the untreated cells. When nude mice bearing tumors were injected with Amauroderma rude extract, the tumors grew at a slower rate than the control. Examination of these tumors revealed extensive cell death, decreased proliferation rate as stained by Ki67, and increased apoptosis as stained by TUNEL. Suppression of c-myc expression appeared to be associated with these effects. Taken together, Amauroderma rude represented a powerful medicinal mushroom with anti-cancer activities.

Highlights

Natural products have attracted extensive attention in health promotion and disease treatment and in drug discovery and development
Microorganisms have been invaluable for drug discovery and development of lead compound-based drugs because certain bioactive molecules can only be obtained from particular organisms
When screening bioactive medicinal mushrooms for anti-cancer activity, we unexpectedly found that Amauroderma rude possessed the highest activity in inducing cancer cell death

Summary

Introduction

Natural products have attracted extensive attention in health promotion and disease treatment and in drug discovery and development. Amauroderma rude Extract Exerts the Highest Activity in Inducing Cancer Cell Death We found that Amauroderma rude was the most effective agent in inducing cancer cell death (Fig. 2a). Amauroderma rude exerted the most effective function in inducing cancer cell death (Fig. 3).

Results

Conclusion