Edible Mushrooms and Their In Vitro Culture as a Source of Anticancer Compounds

Abstract

Cancer diseases are one of the main causes of death in the world. The experiences from Asian and Eastern European countries show that mushrooms can play an important role in the prevention and treatment of cancers. An example would be Piptoporus betulinus, traditionally used in the Czech Republic in colorectal cancer treatment, while fruiting bodies of Inonotus obliquus were used in folk medicine in Eastern Europe to treat cancer diseases since the sixteenth or seventeenth century. It is commonly known that substances with immunostimulating, antioxidant, and revitalizing properties naturally occurring in food, including edible mushrooms, can be an important element in anticancer prevention. Due to seasonal occurrence of mushrooms’ fruiting bodies in the natural state, an access to many of them is difficult, and the problem is also their correct identification; thus it is obvious that the easiest way to obtain them is edible mushrooms from commercial cultivations, for example Agaricus bisporus, Pleurotus ostreatus, or Lentinula edodes. The search for an effective material for the prevention and treatment of cancer diseases resulted in an undertaking of an introduction of edible mushrooms mycelial cultures in vitro. Thus, the last three decades is the period of the most intensive studies on substances isolated from mushrooms, both fruiting bodies and mycelial cultures in vitro.