Evaluation of Some Mushrooms from Kashmir Valley for their Potential Anti-Cancer Activity

ABSTRACT

Background: In the recent past, there has been a shift towards alternate and traditional therapies for the prevention and cure for various diseases including cancer, hypertension, diabetes etc. Due to the risk of side effects associated with allopathic medicines, people are fast turning towards traditional and folk medicines because of their supposedly low risk of side effects. Mushrooms have a very long and well-established role in traditional system of medicine in many Asian countries especially in China, Korea, and Japan etc. Methods: Fresh mushrooms were collected and identified based on morphological and reproductive characters by comparing with standard field guides by Largent (1973).Three different mushroom species were selected for the study. The material collected from target sites were subjected to solvent extraction followed by preparation of stock extracts, which were further used for the evaluation of anti-cancer activity. In-vitro cytotoxicity against different human cell lines was determined and the samples showing 50% or more growth inhibition at 100 µg/ml were considered as potential. Results: Ethanolic extract of mushroom 1 (100µg/ml) exhibited highest % age growth inhibition of 61, 53, 25% on lung, colon and CNS cell lines respectively. In case of mushroom-2 Ethanol water (11) extracts 1 (100 µg/ml) showed highest %age growth inhibition of 19, 38, 7% against liver, Neuroblastoma, Colon cell lines respectively. Likewise, Ethanolic Extract of mushroom-3(100 µg/ml) exhibited highest %age growth inhibition of 58, 65, 13% on lung, neuroblastoma and prostate cell lines respectively. Conclusions: Based on preliminary evaluation two of the mushroom varieties showed promising results in terms of their anticancer activity however they need further evaluation and determination to ascertain their potential anticancer activity.