Prevention and treatment of cancer using so-called medicinal mushrooms raw materials: Criticism, facts, and perspectives

Abstract

The purpose of the present review is the analysis of modern knowledge on use of medicinal mushrooms metabolites in cancer treatment, including in vitro experiments and clinical studies, with a preliminary assessment of the prospects for the development at least of some tactics of immunotherapy for malignant neoplasms. The data on the efficacy of adjuvant therapy of tumors in combination with mushroom extracts in relation to tumor regression as well as improving overall survival rates are presented. It is postulated that the improvement of long-term results of treatment can be most successfully reached with the use of medicinal mushrooms raw materials. This is due to the fact that an important task after adjuvant therapy (i.e. enhancing the immune surveillance of tumor derivatives) can be successfully solved using polysaccharides of fungal origin. In their final links and targets, such a practice coincides with clinically proven cytokine therapy. The involvement of Russian clinicians in practice of assessment of long-term results of treatment with fungal dectin-stimulation seems to us to be important task of clinical oncology.