Phytochemistry and bioactivities of the main constituents of Polyporus umbellatus (Pers.) Fries

Background: Edible fungi resources have good application prospects in the research and development of food, medicine, and health products. Polyporus umbellatus (Pers.) Fries, as a precious edible and medicinal fungus, has long been used by Chinese medicine to treat urinary systems and related kidney diseases.

Purpose: In recent years, researchers have discovered and isolated a variety of active compounds from P. umbellatus. Modern phytochemical and pharmacological experiments showed that the crude extract of P. umbellatus had many biological functions and could be widely used in the fields of food, pharmaceutical and cosmetics. This paper summarizes the active components of P. umbellatus, through elaborating its mechanism of action, further clarify the action substances, in order to improve the utilization rate of P. umbellatus, promote the development and application of P. umbellatus in food, pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry.

Methods: In this paper, the literatures related to P. umbellatus were summarized and classified by "China National Knowledge Instructure (CNKI)", "Google Scholar" and "Web of Science". Compared with other articles, this work systematically sorted out all the active substances with clear structures in P. umbellatus. On this basis, combined with the chemical composition of P. umbellatus, its functional efficacy was expounded, and the effects of different types of active substances in P. umbellatus were further presented.

Results: The main chemical constituents of P. umbellatus include polysaccharide and sterol, and the secondary compounds include fatty acids, Phenols and other small molecules. These active substances endowed P. umbellatus anti-cancer, Antibacterial, diuretic, antioxidant, enhance immune system, promote hair growth and other pharmacological activities, which has been verified many times in vivo and in vitro experiments.

Conclusion: Modern in vitro or in vivo pharmacological experiments and clinical practice for the efficacy of P. umbellatus provides a strong support, and the separation of compounds in P. umbellatus has also deepened people's understanding of this traditional Chinese medicine, greatly promoted the development and application of P. umbellatus. However, the complex active substances of poring also hinder the research of P. umbellatus to some extent, and the mechanism of action and potential synergistic or antagonistic effect of the mixture of various active ingredients have not been clearly analyzed. How to use the bioactivity-guided separation strategy to identify more bioactive components and analyze the molecular mechanism of the main active components have become the main problems of P. umbellatus research, but also provides a direction for the further study of it.

Edible fungus; Functional food; Mechanism of action; Pathophysiology; Phytochemistry; Phytotherapy.