Anti-tumor Activity of Agaricus bisporus Extracts and its Relation with IL-2 in Tumor-Bearing Mice

Mushroom is widely used as a traditional medicinal fungus, and it has been known to exhibit immune-stimulatory and anti-cancer activity. However, the exact immune response in tumor-bearing mice after exposure to mushroom extract was unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate whether or not crude preparations extracted from Agaricus bisporus can promote type 1 immune response in tumor-bearing mice. Watery and ethanolic extracts of mushroom were intraperitoneally administered into tumor-bearing mice for 28 alternative days, tumor volume was measured twice weekly, also IL-2 level was determined in the sera of mice one day before the beginning of treatment and after 2 and 4 weeks of treatment. The results showed that both extracts significantly inhibit the growth of tumor up to 72.2% at the end of experiment, while only the ethanolic extract significantly increased the level of IL-2 production from 11.2 and 16.9 pg/ml up to 26.4 and 42.5 pg/ml after 2 and 4 weeks of treatment respectively. To confirm these results , further studies are required to investigate the ability of these extracts to promote the production of IL-12 & IFN-γ which are the major cytokines involved in immune response type 1 activation.