A study on the cytotoxic effect of several fungal ethanol and water extracts

Papers broadly covering the Amanita genus.
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visionaryhead
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A study on the cytotoxic effect of several fungal ethanol and water extracts

Post by visionaryhead » Fri Aug 27, 2021 4:39 pm

Hello forum! I recently published the results from my work, done during the span of the last year and a half, focusing on evaluating the in vitro cytotoxic effect of several extracts derived from fungi. Amanita muscaria is of course included in this study.
Since when I started doing this I had no idea how to work with this amazing mushroom, I used an ethanol extract prepared by a local healer. This person has worked with a lot of cancer patients and has claimed that his extract has helped numerous people get their 'feet out of the grave'. As well as shrinking tumors and their metastases, the extract has demonstrated a very good ability to destroy endoparasites such as tapeworms, which has been looked into by some of our colleagues at another Bulgarian institution and has been proven to be the case. The next extract (a "water extract") to be evaluated in our lab will be amanitadreamer's tea, with her blessing I hope :)
The results show a definite cytotoxic effect on the cancer cells we used in our study (for A. muscaria - A549 and H1299, lung carcinoma cell lines). The non-cancerous cells we used (MRC-5, healthy lung fibroblasts) also died, but that doesn't mean this mushroom harms your healthy cells when you consume it, it just means that the extract has some way of inducing cytotoxicity in a cell culture (very different than in an actual living organism). The very same extract we used, prepared by the same person, has been given to mice in a separate study indicating no toxicity, no liver or kidney damage and no neuronal damage. So this result is definitely interesting and we are in the process of planning further studies to euclidate just what is going on here. We also have leads on what exactly the anti-tumour mechanism in an actual organism is (expanded upon in the paper itself), and it is distinct from the cytotoxic effect observed here, the mechanism of which is as of yet unknown; so ultimately, what I present here is just an interesting result I obtained, its purpose being simply to add to the total knowledge base that exists for this mysterious fungus.
This is my first study ever published; since we're working on a very limited budget there's nothing revolutionary here yet, but I hope you will find this interesting and I hope to be a productive member of this wonderful community. Since I started I've been getting more and more invested in A. muscaria and it's becoming my primary focus of interest, both in my work as a molecular biologist and personally, as someone looking to experience what our teacher can give us.

Link: http://www.bcc.bas.bg/BCC_Volumes/Volum ... 35-041.pdf

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