CHEMICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF GANODERMA LUCIDUM AND ITS ASSOCIATED BIOACTIVITIES IN CULTURED HUMAN CARCINOMA CELLS

Abstract

Ganoderma lucidum is a medicinal mushroom that has reported to possesses multiple health promoting properties including anti-tumor, anti-diabetes and immunoprotective effects. Understanding the chemo-preventative properties of bioactive components from Ganoderma lucidum and their acting mechanisms would be essential to develop complementary chemotherapies using natural products as potential candidates. This study has developed methods to extract, isolate and identify groups of triterpenoids and derivatives from Ganoderma lucidum and investigated their associated bioactivities in three human carcinoma cells. The study also looked into the effects of lipid components from Ganoderma lucidum on colon carcinoma cells. The overall results indicated that Ganoderma lucidum triterpenoids and their derivatives exhibited growth inhibitory effects on carcinoma cells in a cell specific and structure dependent manner. On the other hand, the Ganoderma lucidum lipid extract induced differentiation in colon carcinoma cells.