<i>Astragalus</i> Shiitake—A Novel Functional Food with High Polysaccharide Content and Anti-Proliferative Activity in a Colorectal Carcinoma Cell Line

The chemical and nutritional constituents of mushrooms can alter significantly when grown on different substrates. Based on this fact, an approach was made to cultivate a new type of mushroom, Hengshan <i>Astragalus</i> Shiitake, by growing Shiitake mushrooms on beds supplemented with th...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bunu Tamang, Qi Liang, Biju Balakrishnan, Su Peng, Wei Zhang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2022-06-01
Series:Nutrients
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/11/2333
Description
Summary:The chemical and nutritional constituents of mushrooms can alter significantly when grown on different substrates. Based on this fact, an approach was made to cultivate a new type of mushroom, Hengshan <i>Astragalus</i> Shiitake, by growing Shiitake mushrooms on beds supplemented with the roots of an edible herbal plant, <i>Astragalus membranaceus</i>. In this study, three green extraction techniques, including microwave-enzyme assisted (MEA), ultrasound-enzyme assisted (UEA) and microwave-ultrasound-enzyme assisted (MUEA) extractions, were used to compare both the yield and antiproliferative activity of the polysaccharide-rich extracts (PREs) from HAS in human colorectal carcinoma cells (HCT 116). Both HAS-A and HAS-B extracts contain significantly higher amounts of polysaccharides when compared to the control (Shiitake extract), regardless of the extraction methods. The PREs from HAS-B have significantly higher anti-proliferative activity in HCT 116 compared to the control when using the UEA extraction method. Our findings demonstrate that HAS-B can become a novel functional food with anti-proliferative activities and the optimization of UEA extraction would help to develop new active extract-based health products.
ISSN:2072-6643