Fungi as a source of anticancer agents: metabolic products and their functional implications

Despite significant advancements in chemotherapy, treatment efficacy remains limited by drug resistance and toxicity. Anticancer agents from natural sources have been proven in terms of potency, efficiency, and safety. Among them, fungi have emerged as the largest contributor to the field of medicine. However, many fungal bioactive compounds remain underexplored due to their structural and ecological diversity. This review highlights the research progress on products, functions, and therapeutic mechanisms of anticancer fungi identified during 2015-2025. Furthermore, this review provides a novel integrative perspective by comprehensively comparing three diverse categories of fungi, including endophytic, marine and edible fungi. Although various anticancer metabolites have been reported from edible and marine fungi, only a few have reached the market primarily due to low metabolite yields and limited clinical, toxicity, and pharmacokinetic data. This review focused on the most potent anticancerous metabolites, fungal extracts and their biological activities from 3 categories of fungi against the common cancer cell lines, indicating endophytic fungi as the biggest source of anticancerous metabolites. Anticancer mechanisms involved are the production of ROS, damage to mitochondrial membrane, inhibition of microtubule formation, caspase 3/9 pathway activation, and macrophage-based actions.