Ganoderma – A therapeutic fungal biofactory

Ganoderma - a therapeutic fungal biofactory.

Ganoderma is a basidiomycete white rot fungus which has been used for medicinal purposes for centuries particularly in China, Japan and Korea. A great deal of work has been carried out on Ganoderma lucidum. The common names for preparations include Lingzhi, Munnertake, Sachitake, Reishi and Youngzhi. This review collates the publications detailing activities and compounds by representative spec...

Cordyceps: a traditional Chinese medicine and another fungal therapeutic biofactory?

Traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) are growing in popularity. However, are they effective? Cordyceps is not studied as systematically for bioactivity as another TCM, Ganoderma. Cordyceps is fascinating per se, especially because of the pathogenic lifestyle on Lepidopteron insects. The combination of the fungus and dead insect has been used as a TCM for centuries. However, the natural fungus ha...

Therapeutic potential of Ganoderma lucidum (Fr.)

Mushrooms represent a major and untapped source of potent new pharmaceutical products. The antioxidant, antiinflammatory, antinociceptive, antimutagenic, anticarcinogenic, antitumour, hepatoprotective, nephroprotective and cardioprotective activities of the methanolic extract of Ganoderma lucidum (Fr.) P. Karst. collected from tropical South India were evaluated for the revalidation of its util...

The therapeutic potential of fungal ribotoxins.

Ribotoxins constitute a family of toxic extracellular fungal RNases that exert a highly specific activity on a conserved region of the larger molecule of rRNA, known as the sarcin-ricin loop. This cleavage of a single phosphodiester bond inactivates the ribosome and leads to protein synthesis inhibition and cell death. In addition to this ribonucleolytic activity, ribotoxins can cross lipid mem...

Therapeutic keratoplasty in fungal corneal ulcers.