Want China Times, CNA 2013-08-31
A research
team headed by institute president Chi-Huey Wong and assistant research fellow
Wu Chung-yi has proven that a crude extract of fucose-containing
polysaccharides from reishi or lingzhi mushrooms, named F3, can induce
antibodies to recognize tumor-associated carbohydrate antigens on cancer cells
and kill them.
According
to Academia Sinica, Taiwan's top academic research institute, the research on
reishi polysaccharides' cancer-fighting effects was started by a group headed
by National Yang-Ming University professor Hsu Hsieh-yeh, which injected F3
into mice with lung cancer and discovered that the extract could slow tumor
growth, although it did not know how the mechanism works.
Thanks to a
glycan array, a sample-screening method, designed by the Wong-Wu team, it was
found that the sera from mice immunized with F3 contain the antibodies that
recognize the tumor antigens known as Globo H, as well as related structures.
The
research team also found that inhibition of tumor growth is directly related to
the amount of these types of antibodies. In other words, the larger the amount
of Globo H-recognizing anitibodies, the smaller the tumor, Academia Sinica
said.
With the
finding, the team separated F3 into a fucose-enriched fraction called FMS for
immunization and found that FMS can induce even more anti-Globo H antibodies
and thus, more effectively inhibit tumor growth.
The study
further demonstrated that the fucose residue is the key to the reishi
mushroom's cancer-fighting ability, proven by the finding that the
cancer-fighting activity was reduced dramatically when the fucose residue was
removed.
With
assistance from other research teams, the effective structures of the
fucose-containing saccharides were elucidated. This research thereafter
established the molecular mechanism of reishi polysaccharides with regard to
their cancer-fighting activity, the institute said.
The
research results were published in the current issue of the US's Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences journal, under the title immunization of
fucose-containing polysaccharides from reishi mushroom induces antibodies to
tumor-associated Globo H-series epitopes.
The first
authors of the paper are named as Liao Shih-fen, a PhD student at the Institute
of Biochemical Sciences of National Taiwan University, and Liang Chi-hui, who
is conducting post-doctoral research at the Genomics Research Center of
Academia Sinica.
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