Antineoplastic Effect of Mushrooms: A Review (Report‪)‬

Introduction For many years, humankind has benefited from green plants as a source of drugs and herbal remedies. Fungi, on the other hand, have not been considered in any significant way. However, this is changing very rapidly and fungi are expected as a major source of pharmaceuticals and medicinal food in the coming years. The platform for fungi as a source of pharmaceuticals and health food will be very important and their economic potential will be extremely important (Pan Ming Li, 1992). The ancient people of India, China, Iran and Seythian used mushrooms in their ritualistic performances (Lowy, 1971). The ancestors of Finno-Ugric were also familiar with the religious conception of mushrooms (Bongard-Levin, 1980). The Mexican Indians seem to regard the psychotropic plants as mediators with God. Nahuati dialect speaking people named mushrooms as 'teohanotactl', which means flesh of God. Classical religious scriptures like "Vedas" have mentioned their medicinal value. The Greeks regarded mushrooms as "Providing strength to soldiers in war". The Romans considered them as "Food of the Gods" and the Chinese treated them as the "Elixir of life" (Chang and Miles, 1989). Mushrooms are not a taxonomic group. According to Chang and Miles (1992), mushrooms are defined as "a macro fungi with a distinctive fruiting body which can be hypogeous or epigeous, large enough to be seen with the naked eye and to be picked by hand". There are approximately 14,000 described species of mushrooms. However, there is an estimated 1.5 million species of fungi, of which it is likely that there are approximately 140,000 species that qualify as mushrooms; suggesting that only 10% have been reported so far in science. Medicinal mushrooms have a long tradition in Asian countries, whereas their use in Western nations has only slightly increased during the last decade (Sharma, 2003).