New cancer drug could be developed using mushroom that grows on insects: Research

Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) [US], October 19 (ANI): The Cordyceps mushroom is well known for its gruesome eating habits: it is well-known that its spores kill insects by infecting them, and the dead insects' flesh sprouts fully developed fruiting bodies of the Cordyceps fungus.
The bioactive molecule cordycepin found in cordyceps, however, has great therapeutic potential and may one day be turned into effective new antiviral and anticancer-treatment">cancer treatments. The mushrooms are rare in the wild, and up until now, growing healthy Cordyceps in the lab has been difficult, hindering scientific research. However, Professor Mi Kyeong Lee of Chungbuk National University and her team, including Dr Ayman Turk, have discovered a way to grow these elusive fungi in a controlled environment without losing their potency. Their findings are published today in Frontiers in Microbiology.
"Cordycepin is one of the cytotoxic nucleoside analogues with complementary therapeutic activities in anti-proliferation and anti-metastasis in cancer cells," said Dr Lee, senior author of the study. "In addition, recent research findings strongly urge preclinical and clinical studies of cordycepin for the comprehensive treatment of Covid-19."
Finding the right food
Typically, cordyceps is grown in a lab using grains like brown rice.
However, when cordycepin was extracted from Cordyceps grown on grains, the levels were incredibly low. Scientists surmised that this was because the protein content of the grains was insufficient to feed the Cordyceps.
Given cordycepin's tremendous potential, Lee and her colleagues were eager to discover a means to cultivate a healthy, robust Cordyceps in the laboratory and produce large quantities of the bioactive substance for medical study.
Since different insects give different nutrients, scientists also looked into which commercially available food insects gave their mushrooms the best meal. They explored edible insects as an alternate growing medium for Cordyceps.
They cultured Cordyceps for two months and then harvested them to explore the outcomes using crickets, silkworm pupae, mealworms, grasshoppers, white-spotted flower chafer larvae, and Japanese rhinoceros beetles. There were noticeable disparities in the growth rates of the Cordyceps on the various insect foods: it thrived best on mealworms and silkworm pupae and did poorly on chafer larvae and grasshoppers. However, maximum growth did not always coincide with the high cordycepin concentrations that Dr. Lee and her team were searching for. The Cordyceps cultivated on Japanese rhinoceros beetles didn't grow as big, but they produced the highest levels of cordycepin--34 times more than the levels produced on the worst-performing silkworm pupae.
"Cordyceps grown on edible insects contained approximately 100 times more cordycepin compared to Cordyceps on brown rice," said Lee.
Fattening Cordyceps up
Investigations revealed that the insect's fat content--specifically, its high levels of oleic acid, which may be required for cordycepin synthesis--was the key to producing cordycepin, not its protein content. The amount of cordycepin produced by the Cordyceps fed on a poor-performing insect meal increased by 50% with the addition of oleic acid.
"Our research convincingly shows that a potential strategy for boosting cordycepin production in the growth of Cordyceps would be to use insects with a high oleic acid content," Lee said.
These findings provide encouragement for scientists looking for novel treatments for debilitating diseases, as the medicinal potential of cordyceps mushrooms is hindered by the challenge of manufacturing cordycepin in the lab. We can use the strength of these extremely hungry Cordyceps to accelerate the discovery of new drugs if we know what to feed them.
"The cultivation method of Cordyceps suggested in this study will enable cordycepin production more effectively and economically," Lee said. "However, securing edible insects is not yet sufficient for scale-up to an industrial level. It is also thought that more efficient production may be possible through the use of other insects, which needs to be demonstrated by further study." (ANI)