Recent advancement in polysaccharides from Cornus officinalis Sieb. et Zucc.: Extractions, purifications, structural...

Cornus officinalis Sieb. et Zucc. (C. officinalis) has been widely utilized as a traditional Chinese medicine and food ingredient in China. C. officinalis polysaccharides (COPs) is one of the key bioactive components of C. officinalis, which has attracted much attention due to their decent pharmacological activities, such as anti-aging, antioxidant, anti-tumor, antidiabetic, neuroprotective effects and anti-atherosclerotic efficacy. COPs can be extracted via diverse methods with the extraction yields ranging from 3.42 % to 30.43 %. Although significant progress has been made in the extraction and purification technologies, the structure-activity relationships between COPs structures and their pharmacological effects remain to be fully elucidated. To address this, the present review systematically summarizes recent advances in COPs research, including extraction methods, purification techniques, structural characteristics, bioactivities, and safety assessment. In addition, the structure-activity relationships of COPs were critically analyzed and their potential applications, current challenges, and future research directions were discussed, which would provide theoretical reference and practical guidance for the follow-up studies.