Volume 45, 2015, Pages 363–456
Chapter 10 – Mushrooms: A Source of Exciting Bioactive Compounds
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780444634733000101
Abstract
Over
several centuries, natural products being major molecular structural
resources have played an important role for discovery of drugs. Aspirin
the antipyretic and analgesic drug, taxol the anti-cancer drug,
artemisinin the antimalarial drug, and huperzine A and tacrin the
anti-Alzheimer's disease drugs together with many antibiotics and
penicillins are the typical examples. A great number of the chemical
structure novelties of natural products have been isolated and the
chiral centers of these compounds are advantageous as most of the
natural products occur as single enantiomers; and only one of the
enantiomers of many chiral drugs are active for their biological
activity. Statistical data demonstrate that the origins of half of the
drugs approved were natural products between 1994 and 2007. In 2008,
however, 225 new drugs from the natural products were developed and
almost 38% and 18% of them are used as anticancer and anti-infective
drugs, respectively. In the past century, almost 200,000 natural
compounds have been obtained from various natural products and some of
them are used as natural drugs.
Recently, the
discovery or synthesis of new biologically active compounds has
increasingly become difficult. At this time, interest in mushrooms as a
potential source of bioactive compounds has occurred and much research
investigating bioactivity has been investigated in the last two decades
in detail. Up to date, lectins, polysaccharides, polysaccharide-protein
complexes, polysaccharide-peptides, lanostane-type triterpenoids,
phenolic, and flavonoid-structured compounds indicating anticancer,
antioxidant, antitumour, antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal,
anti-inflammatory, anti-imunomodulatory activities have been isolated
from the mushroom species. Recently, mushrooms have been especially used
as immunomodulators and antitumor agents. Medicinal mushrooms are the
sources of polysaccharides that prevent the cancer and increase the
strength of the immune system. Since the treatment of all types of
cancers diseases has challenges, mushrooms may become very important
source of drugs for modern medicine to find cures particularly for the
cancer diseases.
The published papers on mushroom
species studied for their chemistry together with their biological
activities in the last two decades were evaluated in this chapter.
Particularly, the studies comprise the last decade. Briefly,
polysaccharides, terpenoids, steroids, phenolics, and alkaloids isolated
from the mushroom species are discussed together with their biological
activities.
Keywords
- Alkaloids;
- β-Glucan;
- Biological activities;
- Mushroom;
- Phenolics;
- Polysaccharides;
- Steroids;
- Terpenoids
Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
