Effect of Aqueous Extracts of Cultured Cordyceps militaris on Bombyx mori Ovary Cell Lines

摘要

The caterpillar-shaped Chinese medicinal mushroom cordyceps sinensis has been used in China as a food or herbal medicine to treat numerous diseases. As uncultivated cordyceps sinensis is becoming extremely rare, the price of this herbal medicine is very high. In order to study the pharmacological effects and to minimize the cost, an economical method for culturing of cordyceps sinensis has been developed, which could be processed to large-scale production. We compared the pharmacological components, and the apoptosis inducing activity in BmN cells with both cultured and uncultivated cordyceps sinensis. Based on the real-time PCR of five genes in cyclin family, the aqueous extracts at a concentration of 1mg/ml inhibited 90% of the gene expression when the cells were for 48 hours. Our results indicate that cultured cordyceps sinensis has a higher content of polysaccharide and the aqueous extract shows significant inhibition effect on the BmN cells.