Mushrooms have been used extensively as food and medicine for centuries. Currently, many bioactive compounds have been isolated from different types of mushrooms. Among these, the development of mushroom immunomodulators has received a lot of attention from researchers due to growing research in the field of immunotherapy.
Lifeasible offers a service to investigate the potential of mushroom extracts for the development of immunomodulatory drugs. We assess the immunostimulatory ability of mushroom extracts in animals by measuring various immunological parameters including lysozyme activity, NO production, and serum cytokine levels. We offer a one-stop pre-clinical research service on mushrooms as immunosuppressive drugs to better develop their potential use in the treatment of human diseases.
Immunomodulatory Mechanisms in Mushrooms
When pathogens breach our physical barrier, the body's next defense response is activated. These include prostaglandins and cytokines, which act as messengers to regulate the immune response and stimulate adaptive immunity. The body's immune system can be regulated by diet, supplements, or endogenous bioactive compounds.
The main classes of compounds from medicinal mushrooms with immunomodulatory properties are terpenes and terpenoids, lectins, fungal immunomodulatory proteins (FIPs), and polysaccharides (especially β-d-glucans, but also polysaccharopeptides and polysaccharide proteins). These compounds have significant immunomodulatory properties. Among them are bioactive polysaccharides from fungi, which play a key role in immunomodulation. Therefore, these bioactive compounds in mushrooms can be used in preclinical studies to activate innate and adaptive immune responses and act as biological response modifiers.
Fig. 1 Key components and pathways in the host immune response to pathogen infections. (Zhao S, et al., 2020)
Our Services
Our research team has many years of experience in the development of immunosuppressive agents and can facilitate your experimental research by analyzing the immunomodulatory activity of mushroom extracts. We can also adapt our experimental protocols to suit your needs. Our services include but are not limited to the following:
Isolation of Immunomodulatory Compounds From Mushrooms
We offer services for the isolation of compounds with immunomodulatory activity from a wide range of medicinal mushrooms, including mushroom substrates and fermented mycelium.
Immunomodulatory Biomarker Assay
We evaluated the in vivo immunomodulatory activity of mushroom extracts using albino rats as an animal model. The following main indicators were evaluated:
- Determination of lysozyme activity
- Determination of NO concentration
- Serum cytokine assay
- Histopathological examination. Standard histological examination using a light microscope
Contact Us
Lifeasible offers a research service for the potential use of mushroom extracts in the development of immunomodulatory drugs. We are also developing methods to extract bioactive compounds from mushrooms. Promoting the discovery of the medicinal value of mushrooms will allow the immunomodulatory compounds in mushrooms to be widely used as therapeutic agents. If you are interested in our services, please contact us as soon as possible for a detailed description of our services.
References
- Elhusseiny SM, et al. Immunomodulatory activity of extracts from five edible basidiomycetes mushrooms in Wistar albino rats. Sci Rep. 2022; 12 (1): 12423.
- Zhao S, et al. Immunomodulatory effects of edible and medicinal mushrooms and their bioactive immunoregulatory products. Fungi (Basel). 2020; 6 (4): null.
For research use only, not for clinical use.
