Innovative use of neglected edible and medicinal mushrooms within the context of anti-inflammatory diet to prevent colon disease
Progetto Inflammatory bowel diseases (lBDs) are chronic, relapsing, and multifactorial pathologies of the colon,
which show increased and unbalanced intestinal immune response to external stimuli [1,2,3,4].
An emerging field of research arises from the potential use of medicinal and food mushrooms, as sources of bioactive extracts characterized by
compounds able to contrast the burden of inflammation and oxidative stress, in experimental models of ulcerative colitis [5,6,7].
In this project, we wil| examine the role of bioactive extracts from edible mushrooms both included in
the list of Botanicals (approved by the Italian
Ministry of Health on January 9th 2019), namely Grifola frondosa (Dicks.) Gray (maitake), Lentinula edodes (Berk.) Pegler, Pleurotus ostreatus (Jacq.)
P. Kumm., and not included in the list, such as Hypsizygus marmoreus (Peck) H.E. Bigelow. The selected mushrooms are highly nutritious food source
and are reported to contain bioactive metabolites which exhibit health-promoting properties, including antinflammatory, hypocholesterolemic, antitumor,
immunomodulatory, antioxidant, and antidiabetic activities [8-27].
Diffarent cultivation conditions will be investigated and optimized, taking also in consideration the emerging trends related to a circular economy
perspective of sustainable production, i.e. the use of by-products/wastes from agri-food chains to be valorized as secondary raw material (for e.g., wine,
olive oil and horticultural crops production chain). Green extraction strategies will be performed on secondary raw material, and both extracts and
not-extracted by-products will be used as cultivation substrates. Also, the effects on mushrooms’
metabolome, deriving from different substrates used
for cultivation, will be investigated. The mushrooms cultivated in such conditions, in the form of carpophores and mycelium, will be then extracted with
biocompatible solvents, and analyzed through multiple analytical approaches for unravelling the
chemical composition, in terms of both primary and
secondary metabolites, and their biosynthetic pathways, as well.
The bioactivity of the extracts will be evaluated in vitro, against main pathogenic bacterial strains, including clinical isolates, involved in the dysbiosis
occuring in inflammatory bowel diseases. Furthermore, protective effects of the extracts will be investigated in isolated colon specimens challenged
with Escherichia coli lipopolysaccharide (LPS), an ex vivo experimental model of ulcerative colitis [28- 30]. In this regard, pro-inflammatory and
pro-oxidant biomarkers will be measured, after treatment with the extracts.
In silico approaches such as components-targets and docking analyses will be conducted with the aim to predict the putative targets underlying
antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory effects. Such targets will be further confirmed through gene
expression and protein level analyses.