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Mycelium? Fruitbodies? Extracts? Questions on Quality in
Medicinal Mushroom Products?

Cordyceps sinensis fruiting in culture

What's the Best Stuff?

Shiitake fruiting in culture

There is a lot of confusion today in the field of Medicinal Mushrooms as to what form of the mushroom product is the best to use. Is it the fruitbody, or the mycelium, or an extract standardized for some particular compound? This question is not as straightforward as it seems. The answer to this question should be based in scientific fact, not on historical usage, or on someone's idea of what looks pretty or what feels or tastes good. There is a lot of amazingly complex bio-chemistry going on in the mushroom kingdom. Many new drugs are under testing from this kingdom for the treatment of all sorts of diseases like Cancer, AIDS, Diabetes and Hepatitis. This subject deserves to be accurately addressed so that the general public can know which health supplements are the best for their uses.

This article addresses this issue in the most comprehensive way possible, by sharing with the public several years worth of research results, dedicated to just this question. But first, some definitions are needed:

Fruitbody - This is the mushroom that you see. It is the spore producing portion involved with reproduction. Basically, the fruitbody is equivalent to the floor of a plant. Fruitbodies ONLY form in response to some stress in the environment... heat, cold, fire, flood, running out of food, that sort of thing. The mushroom that you see is NOT the growth form of the organism. Strictly the reproductive portion.

Mycelium - This is the growth form of the organism, the stable state in which all of the life processes occur; eating, growth, competing for food, some forms of reproduction, etc. In cultivated mushroom products, the mycelium can be grown either in a tank full of liquid (unnatural growth condition) or it can be grown on a solid substrate of some material that it would normally grow on (natural growth conditions). For industrial production of many pharmaceutical drugs, the compounds are extracted not from the mycelium, but from the broth that the mycelium is grown in.

Extract - This is either the mushroom or the mycelium, extracted with some type of solvent with the intention of concentrating some desirable portion and eliminating or at least reducing some unimportant portion of the mushroom. There are a number of solvents which are used, depending on which compounds are desired. The two most common are Alcohol or Water. Extracts are more expensive and can be better or worse than the raw feedstock, depending on a number of factors. If the compounds that you need are in the extract, then that is the best form. But how do you know? In the section below on extracts, this issure will be covered.

Scientific Basis of Quality in Medicinal Mushrooms

History - The cultivation of mushrooms for the production of medicinal compounds is a fairly new science, dating only from the late 1970's. Since that time, there have been a number of bio-active compounds of interest identified from the fruitbody, from the mycelium and from the residual culture broth. In greater than 90% of the cases, the compounds present in the different life stages are exactly identical. But in a few instances there are differences, where substantially greater amounts of some target compound can be extracted from one growth state as compared to another. Many examples of this can be seen from the charts below, presented here from Dr. Wassers' excellent article: Medicinal Properties of substances occurring in Higher Basidiomycetes Mushrooms: Current Perspectives (Review) published in - International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms, Vol. 1, 31-62 (1999)

Almost all of the research done in the last few years has shown that the greatest biological activities take place in the extra-cellular compounds (metabolic exudates), as compared to compounds from the mycelium or fruitbodies. There are some compounds found in both the mycelium and the fruitbodies that are not extra-cellular in nature, and which have important function in the body. The Beta-Glucans from the cell wall fall into this category. The question presented to any researcher was: "What was the most practical way to approach this issue, in order to produce a product of the greatest effectiveness, while keeping it affordable enough to be available for the general public?" To address the problem by growing in liquid culture, as is commonly done in the Orient was not a good approach. Reasons: The mycelium would have to be extracted as well as the residual culture broth in order to capture all the interesting compounds, and at the same time the few oxidatively different compounds specific to the fruitbodies would be absent. This would drive the price up above the levels which would be reasonable for the US market, and it would not be price competitive with the imported Chinese and Korean products. Alternatively, to grow it for just a couple of weeks on grain as is the usual practice with the American growers is not the answer either, as those products usually assay out as nearly all residual grain which is not effective. While there is a good profit margin in this method of production, and certainly less capital investment cost than with liquid culture; the introduction of nutraceuticals that don't work is counterproductive. The consumers will loose faith in medicinal mushroom products, and the potential benefits are lost.

By looking long and hard at the chemistry of the wild collected fruitbodies, mycelium and exudates (using HPLC/MS and GC/MS, very advanced analytical methods); then experimenting with modifications of the substrate and culture parameters a process was developed to produce a potent high quality product. By controlling such things as time of growth to harvest, O2 to CO2 ratios, light cycle and many other parameters, a product is produced with at least as much of the target compounds as was found in nature. In nearly all cases, the concentration of any target compound of interest exceeded what is found in the naturally grown product. As for water extraction, alcohol extraction, multi-solvent extraction, supercritical fluid extraction, etc, these are all interesting concepts and have some use in targeting specific compounds, but each needs to be addressed as a separate issue. It is not wise to the believe that the best overall option is to make a standardized extract of "X", with disregard to the question, "What are we loosing through the extraction process?"

So, in a nut shell, the process that we developed is this:

Is this the best possible process? Possibly so or it is at least the best first step. Even if further extraction or processing is desired, this is still the most complete and broad-spectrum raw feedstock for down stream processing. By growing the mushroom products this way, we gain the benefits of each phase of the life cycle. The fruitbody as has always been used, the mycelium, and all of the extra-cellulars, such as the anti-viral, and anti bacterial agents which the mycelium exudes in nature to limit the competitors in their normal environment.

Example: There are a number of drugs produced from Shiitake (Lentinula edodes); Lentinan (from the fruit body) LEM (from mycelium) and KS-2 (from residual culture broth). All of these compounds are present in our product. Same product - multiple modes of action.

For some of the cultures, we have to resort to fairly extreme culture parameters; for instance with the Cordyceps sinensis, we grow it out for a period of time in a warm, O2 rich environment, then drastically lower the temperature, change the light cycle and drop the O2 to no more than 50% of atmospheric. Then we stress it to fruiting. And all of this is done on an organic, vegetarian substrate with no insect or animal substances used. The authors that state, "Cordyceps can not be fruited in culture" are obviously not up to date with the work we have been doing as well as the work of a few other cultivators.

Here are pictures showing this process:

Shiitake Fruited, Ready to Harvest	Ganoderma tsugai starting to fruit
Pleurotus ostreatus fruiting	Cordyceps sinensis fruiting
Experimental container for gas exchange control	Glass bottle production for extra-cellular capture

What is the Best Product Available?

What we are producing is quite simply the best product of its kind available in the world today. There is no residual grain as is the case with all of the other domestically produced, solid substrate grown mycelium (less than 2% Residual substrate in ours, vs. typically 60-80% residual grain from some of the other American suppliers. Question: Are you looking to buy Medicinal Mushrooms or are you looking to buy rice flour?). There is a complete profile of the extra-cellular metabolites found in our product, which is not found in liquid culture mycelium. And the life-force of the growth stage, the mycelium, is there in all its glory. The same holds true of the fruitbody-specific compounds which are present and accounted for. To compare products produced by these methods to extracts, well, the truth is that as far as extracts go, enough is not yet known about all the compounds to know which compounds to take out and which ones to leave in. Some manufacturers are saying "Standardized to contain so much of this or so much of that." but there is actually very little information on the 'most important' compounds. Nature is a very complex wonder. Think of the rose... Do you want the color, or the smell, or maybe just the prick of the thorns? Some of the extracts being sold today are no more than the pricks. That is not to say the extracts are not important. They are. But they are specific and need to be treated as such.

Extracts:

In the herbal products field, there was historically a lot of misleading product claims and hocus-pocus, as well as just honest differences in herbs grown in this area or that area. Herbs from different soils, different climates, oftentimes brought about different results. So the industry as a whole responded by demanding standardized extracts. Which is a very good move and definitely a step in the right direction. But it is important to realize that the chemistry of plants is much less complex than what is found in the fungal kingdom (mushrooms). Usually in plants, there are just one or two active ingredients and they are well known. So it is easy to say that standardizing on this or that is going to result in higher quality products. This is a good move with plant based herbs. But the Mushrooms are a different story.

Extract Chemistry:

First off, the Mushroom biochemistry is much more complex than that of plants. Orders of magnitude more complex. And the chemistry involved is not nearly so well known. We use extracts for our most potent and most successful products. But these are very specific and targeted extracts. Extracts which are made for the specific purpose of concentrating out specific compounds. Just as in the production of penicillin, the fungus (Penicillum sp.) is grown in liquid culture, then the active ingredient (Penicillin) is extracted from the residual culture broth. There is a specific target compound with a specific extraction procedure. This works very well. And where we have identified a specific compound which we want, it is easy to find a way to extract it. For example, to extract Lentinan from Shiitake mushrooms is a pretty straight forward chemical process. But what about another compound present in Shiitake, the one called Eritadenine? This compound is useful in the treatment of high cholesterol, while Lentinan is used for the treatment of Cancer. If you extract Shiitake by hot water, then use alcohol to precipitate out the polysaccharide fraction as is the popular extraction process, the Lentinan is concentrated and the resultant product is effective for Cancer treatment or immune stimulation. However, with this process you loose the Eritadenine, and the extract has no effect on blood cholesterol. So, even though the raw product shows great effectiveness in treating high cholesterol, the "Standardized Extract" is useless for this purpose. So what is the more valuable product, the raw full spectrum Shiitake, or the "standardized extract"? The answer is neither, or both. It really depends on what you are hoping to achieve with the supplement. For general Health Supplement useage, the best product is the one that has the greatest effectiveness over a broad range of conditions. In this example, it makes much more sense to use the Full Spectrum product.

In general, the following things can be said regarding
Mushroom Extracts:

There are two general categories of bio-active compounds found in mushrooms, the polysaccharides, which comprise most of the medicinal compounds. These are soluble in hot water and are not soluble in alcohol. The immune-stimulant type action is strictly confined to this class of compounds. If you are looking for Immuno-modulation type of action, then don't use alcohol extracts. That would be a waste of money and time.

The second class of compounds are those which are soluble in non-polar solvents like alcohol and hexane. These are usually smaller in molecular size and much more specific in their action. Nucleosides, de-oxynucleosides and most of the antibiotics fall into this category.

Bottom Line:

We are pleased to provide either Extracts or Full Spectrum Mycelium Products. Or for that matter, fruitbodies or liquid culture mycelium. We do it all, but you can rest assured you will get what you need. Our quality is assured. And we work with you to make sure you are getting what you need for the product task at hand. We know that every company out there wants to say that their products are the best, and hope that by showing you here a little glimpse of the research behind our processes, you can see that we are a bit different than the other producers of medicinal mushrooms.

We do one thing and we do it right. We produce high quality Medicinal Mushrooms. And with the largest production capacity in North America, no project is too big. We have two full time mycologists on staff with over 50 years combined experience, and our work force averages 18 years experience in the production of mushroom compounds. Made in America. Why risk the reputation of your products on imported raw materials, when they are available right here in America, Certified, Qualified and Independently Assayed by FDA certified labs. And at a price lower than the imported raw materials in most cases. Let us bid your next order. You will be pleasantly surprised!

*The information presented here is for informational purposes only and is not to be considered as medical advice for any condition. This information has not been reviewed by the FDA and is for educational purposes.