Anti-inflammatory and anticancer activities of extracts and compounds from the mushroom Inonotus obliquus

Mushroom Inonotus obliquus (I. obliquus) has been used as functional food and traditional Chinese herbs for long time. An efficient method for bioassay-guided preparative isolation was used for identifying the anti-inflammatory and anticancer constituents in I. obliquus. The petroleum ether and ethyl acetate fractions were found to have significant inhibition effects on NO production and NF-κB luciferase activity in macrophage RAW 264.7 cells and cytotoxicity against human prostatic carcinoma cell PC3 and breast carcinoma cell MDA-MB-231. Six main constituents were isolated from these two fractions and they were identified as lanosterol (1), 3β-hydroxy-8,24-dien-21-al (2), ergosterol (3), inotodiol (4), ergosterol peroxide (5) and trametenolic acid (6). Compound ergosterol, ergosterol peroxide and trametenolic acid showed anti-inflammatory activities and ergosterol peroxide and trametenolic acid showed obviously cytotoxicity on human prostatic carcinoma cell PC3 and breast carcinoma MDA-MB-231 cell. The results obtained in this work might contribute to understanding the biological activity of mushroom I. obliquus for food and drug application.