Antimetastatic and immunomodulating effect of water extracts from various mushrooms.

Han SS, Cho CK, Lee YW, Yoo HS.

East-West Cancer Center, College of Oriental Medicine, Daejeon University, Daejeon, Korea.

Abstract

This experiment was conducted to evaluate inhibitory effects against lung metastasis and promotion of splenocytes by water extracts from various mushrooms including Armillaria mellea, Grifola frondosa, Garnoderma frondosa, Codyceps militaris, Hericium erinaceus, Coriolus versicolor, Agaricus Blazei with Lycium Chinense Miller (known as M8). Analysis of carbohydrate using HPTLC showed that beta-glucan and pachyman were some of the major components of M8. Oral administration of M8 resulted in a dose-dependent tendency to inhibit lung metastasis after intravenous injection of colon26-L5 cells. Treatment with M8 resulted in a significant increase of T cell and B cell mitogenic stimuli. The population of CD3, CD19, CD4, and CD8 positive cells increased in a dose dependent manner of M8 administration. However, no significant results were obtained from the population of Mac-1 and NK1.1 positive cells. Oral administration of M8 resulted in the increased production of IFN-gamma and IL-4 by splenocytes stimulated with Con A compared with untreated controls. These results show that M8 has antitumor activities which may be useful as an antimetastatic agent.

PMID: 20633495 [PubMed – in process]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20663037

Regulatory properties of polysaccharopeptide derived from Coriolus versicolor and its combined effect with ciclosporin on the homeostasis of human lymphocytes.

Lee CL, Jiang P, Sit WH, Yang X, Wan JM.

School of Biological Sciences, Kadoorie Biological Sciences Building, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong SAR.

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: Lymphocyte homoeostasis is essential in inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. In search of natural fungal metabolites with effects on lymphocyte homoeostasis, we recently reported that polysaccharopeptide (PSP) from Coriolus versicolor exhibited ciclosporin-like activity in controlling aberrant lymphocyte activation. This object of this study was to investigate its effect on lymphocyte homoeostasis. This was done by investigating the mechanistic actions of PSP in relation to ciclosporin by performing cell cycle and cell death analysis of human lymphocytes in vitro.

METHODS: We investigated the effect of PSP in the presence and absence of ciclosporin on cell proliferation, cell cycle, cell death, immunophenotype and cell cycle regulatory proteins in human lymphocytes.

KEY FINDINGS: The data showed that PSP exhibited homoeostatic activity by promoting and inhibiting the proliferation of resting and phytohaemagglutinin (PHA)-stimulated lymphocytes, respectively. PHA-stimulated lymphocytes exhibited G0/G1 cell cycle arrest that was accompanied by a reduction of cyclin E expression with PSP treatment. Both PSP and ciclosporin blocked the reduction of the CD4/CD8 ratio in stimulated lymphocytes. PSP did not induce cell death in human lymphocytes, but the suppression of the Fasreceptor suggested a protective role of PSP against extrinsic cell death signals. These homoeostatic effects were more potent with combined PSP and ciclosporin treatment than with either fungal metabolite alone.

CONCLUSIONS: Collectively, the results reveal certain novel effects of PSP in lymphocyte homoeostasis and suggest potential as a specific immunomodulatory adjuvant for clinical applications in the treatment of autoimmune diseases.

PMID: 20663037 [PubMed – in process]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20663037

Alternating immunochemotherapy of advanced gastric carcinoma: a randomized comparison of carbazilquinone and PSK to carbazilquinone in patients with curative gastric resection.

A total of 103 patients with advanced gastric carcinoma were randomized after curative surgery to receive an alternate administration of carbazilquinone (CQ) and PSK (Krestin) or carbazilquinone alone. Each course of therapies started 1 week after the surgical operation and therapy schedules consisted of 9 courses. In each course of 6 weeks, CQ (2 mg/m2/week) was administered on day 0, 8, and 15. In combined immunochemotherapy group, PSK was given orally in 3-divided doses of 2 g/m2/day from the day of the third CQ administration for consecutive 4 weeks. Estimated survival rate and cumulative survival curve were compared utilizing the data up to 7 years after the operation. There was no overall significant difference in survival rates between the CQ plus PSK group and the CQ alone group, but a group of patients whose disease was classified as S1 + S2(N1-2) survived significantly longer when treated with the combination of CQ and PSK. Neither in more advanced cases (greater than S3 or greater than N3) nor in cancers of early stages, the addition of PSK provided an additive effect. The favorable result obtained in one subgroup treated with PSK, suggests that the use of this agent in treating gastric cancers should be carefully evaluated in terms of serosal infiltration and nodal metastasis.

Adjuvant therapy with protein-bound polysaccharide K and tegafur uracil in patients with stage II or III colorectal cancer: randomized, controlled trial.

PURPOSE: Intravenous fluorouracil and leucovorin for six to eight months is currently a standard adjuvant treatment for Stage III colon cancer; however, this regimen is complex, inconvenient, and has a high intolerability. Adjuvant chemotherapies are claimed for objective response rates with an acceptable safety profile and complexity. We investigated the benefits of oral protein-bound polysaccharide K added to oral tegafur/uracil on curatively resected Stage II or III colorectal cancer. METHODS: We prospectively randomized 207 patients to treatments of either oral 3.0 g protein-bound polysaccharide K plus 300 mg tegafur/uracil or 300 mg tegafur/uracil alone for two years following 12 mg/m2 and 8 mg/m2 mitomycin treatment on postoperative Days 1 and 2, respectively. The primary end points were disease-free and overall survival, and recurrence rates. RESULTS: Three (1.4 percent) patients were declared ineligible, and three patients did not start treatment. In total, 201 patients were analyzed. The three-year, disease-free survival rate was 80.6 percent (standard error = 3.4 percent) in the protein-bound polysaccharide K group (P = 0.02) compared with 68.7 percent (SE = 5.7 percent) in the control group after a median follow-up of 3.7 years. The estimated relative risk of recurrence in the control group was 1.87 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.10-3.20) at three years. The three-year, overall survival rate was 87.3 percent (standard error = 2.9 percent) in the protein-bound polysaccharide K group and 80.6 percent (standard error = 4.8 percent) in the control group (P = 0.24). The three-year, overall survival rate in 80 pathological TNM Stage III patients was 83.0 percent (standard error = 5.2 percent) in the protein-bound polysaccharide K group and 59.3 percent (standard error = 9.5 percent) in the control group (P = 0.02). Protein-bound polysaccharide K prevented distant metastases (P = 0.05), particularly lung metastases (P = 0.01). The incidence of adverse effects was minimal, and compliance was good. CONCLUSION: Adjuvant therapy using a combination of oral protein-bound polysaccharide K and tegafur/uracil is highly effective in preventing the recurrence of colorectal cancer in Stage II or III patients, and increases overall survival in pathological TNM Stage III. These results will be a sufficient proof to conduct a larger study to compare tegafur/uracil/protein-bound polysaccharide K with 5-fluorouracil/leucovorin.