Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 3, 2025
Multimodal Optical Microscopy Methods Reveal Polyp Tissue Morphology and Structure in Caribbean Reef Building Corals
Published on: September 5, 2014
Structural Characterization and Immunoenhancing Effects of a Polysaccharide from the Soft Coral Lobophytum
Xueqin Cao1, Qian Zhang1, Yanglu Zhu1
1School of Pharmaceutical Sciences (Shenzhen), Sun Yat-Sen University, 132 Waihuan East Road, Guangzhou, 510006, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
Previous studies on the soft coral Lobophytum sarcophytoides (Lobophytum sp.) are mainly about small molecules, and there has been no systematic research on polysaccharides. In the study, a novel polysaccharide (LCPs-1-A) with immunoenhancing functions was successfully extracted and purified from the soft coral Lobophytum sp. After preliminary analysis, our data indicated that LCPs-1-A was composed of glucose and had a molecular weight of 4.90 × 106 Da. Moreover, our findings showed that LCPs-1-A could promote the proliferation and phagocytosis of RAW264.7 cells, stimulate the production of NO and ROS, and increase the mRNA expression of IL-1β, IL-6, and TNF-α, which indicated that LCPs-1-A had a good immunoenhancing activity. Through further studies, we found that LCPs-1-A might play an immunoenhancing role through the TLR4/NF-κB signaling pathway. Therefore, our results demonstrated that LCPs-1-A might be a natural immunostimulant for use in medical and food industries.
