Polysaccharides from medicinal mushrooms for potential use as nutraceuticals

Abstract

Mushrooms have been used for centuries in Asian and other traditional cuisine and traditional medicines due to their culinary and medicinal properties, but their properties remained unknown to the wide scientific community for a long time. In the last few decades, a large amount of research has focused on the types, sources, biosynthesis, and medicinal properties and applications of many mushrooms, mainly members of the Basidiomycetes family. The most common active ingredients in these higher fungi are their extracellular, intracellular, or cell wall polysaccharides, which exhibit immunostimulating, antitumor, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, prebiotic, hypoglycemic, and hypocholesterolemic effects. In the last few years, some of these mushrooms or their biopolymers have been commercialized in pharmaceutical applications, but their application in food and nutraceuticals is still at an early stage. However, the fact that many of these mushrooms are edible (and thus nontoxic) as well as tasty makes them, or their polysaccharides, potentially ideal ingredients for the formulation of novel functional foods and nutraceuticals. However, their biological properties might be affected after addition to food, due to food processing and/or interaction with food ingredients. This chapter describes the most important and studied types and sources of bioactive mushroom polysaccharides, the biosynthesis and bioprocess conditions used for the production/cultivation in solid or liquid media, the relation between molecular/structural characteristics and bioactivity, their medicinal properties, and their existing or potential applications in human nutrition.