Anti-tumor Compounds of Higher Basidiomycetes Fungi: A Review of Novel Known Mushroom Derivatives with Anti-tumor Function

In the Eastern and ancient communities, use of fungi in treatment of diseases has a long history. However, this topic in the Western and modern societies has not been good known. Cancer is a life-threatening disease with a lot of side effects on patients. Cancer therapeutic failure and high mortality justifies taking advantage of the experimental methods to discover anticancer drugs and find new ways for treatment. In the recent decade, many researchers have concluded that some of the higher basidiomycetes fungi are capable of producing metabolites with anti-cancer effects. Some researchers have shown that two groups of metabolites derived from some mushrooms include low molecular weight (such as Epoxyquinone, Cerebrosid, Hispidin, Illodin M and S) and high molecular weight (such as Lentinan, Schizophyllan, Polysaccharide krestin and Calvacin) affect cancer cells in various ways. These compounds can interfere to the cellular pathways such as inflammation and metastasis through the increase of antioxidant capacity, direct cytotoxic effect, disrupt the vessel–creating, increasing of apoptosis, inhibiting the proliferation of tumor cells and increase of tumor cells death with stimulate and activate of the immune system. Although studies on standardization of certain compounds isolated from natural or semi-synthetic effectively mushroom continues, it is necessary to continue efforts on finding the most effective chemical compounds. Hence, in this study we reviewed scientific literatures (1952-2015) with using combination of key words into internet search engine Google and Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge. The purpose of this paper is presenting the most important mushroom's methabolites with antitumor effects and results of researches about the use of them for treatment of cancer.