Yun-zhi mushroom fights prostate cancer

A Mushroom compound has been found found to suppress prostate cancer in mice.

Move over shiitake, it’s time for the ‘turkey tail’ mushroom to shine. A researcher from the Queensland University of Technology, Australia, has pinpointed a compound in the fungi that is capable of completely suppressing prostate tumour development in mice.

This finding, if it can be extrapolated to humans, could prove to be life-saving news for the 35,000 men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer in the UK each year.

Dr Patrick Ling of the Australian Prostate Cancer Research Centre in Queensland and his team extracted a compound called polysaccharopeptide (PSP) from the mushrooms and gave it to laboratory mice over a period of 20 weeks. “I had been working on another natural compound extracted from palm oil which also demonstrated an anti-cancer stem cell effect,” says Dr Ling. “That’s why I thought natural compound like PSP which has been known for decades for killing cancer cells, may have potent anti-cancer stem cell effect.”

Yun-zhi mushroom

Dr Ling and his team found that the mice fed with PSP did not develop prostate tumours at all; while the other mice did. Although there are other substances that have been shown to inhibit prostate tumours, none have proven so effective as this.

The turkey tail mushroom, known as 22:08 01/06/2011, has been used for centuries throughout Asia for its medicinal properties. In Japan it is used as a cancer treatment along with chemotherapy or surgery. Turkey tail mushroom extract is available in supplement form, although Dr Ling is quick to point out that it would be impossible for a human to eat the same amount of mushroom in order to see the benefits seen in the mice.

The fruit body of the turkey tail mushroom contains very low level of the anti-cancer PSP so the main source is actually from the mycelia [the vegetative part formed by spores],” says Dr Ling. “In other words, the fruit body is not the part that is used for the extraction of PSP so it is difficult to tell how much you would need to eat to get the equivalent dose. But if you are talking about the mycelia, it contains only 5% of PSP, so to get a human equivalent dose (2g daily), you would need to consume 40g mycelia. Even so, eating the raw mycelia doesn’t necessarily mean you can absorb all the PSP.”

So until more research is done, it would be difficult to know if you were getting what you needed from the mushroom. Unfortunately, says Dr Ling, getting funding to research a natural compound can prove difficult – he and his team are organising a fundraiser in the hope of doing more research. In the meantime, as there have been no serious side effects or risks associated with the use of the mushroom or its extracts it also wouldn’t do you any harm to add the mushrooms or supplements to your diet.