Phellinus igniarius polysaccharides induced mitochondrial apoptosis of hepatic carcinoma by enhancing reactive oxygen species-mediated AKT/p53 signalling pathways

Abstract

Phellinus igniarius (PI) has various kinds of biological activities, such as antitumour activities, and polysaccharides are one of its main components. In this study, polysaccharides from PI (PIP) were prepared, purified, analysed for their structure and investigated for their antitumour activity and mechanism in vitro. PIP consists of 12138 kDa of carbohydrates containing 90.5 ± 1.6% neutral carbohydrates. PIP consists of glucose, galactose, mannose, xylose, D-fructose, L-guluronic acid, glucosamine hydrochloride, rhamnose, arabinose and D-mannoturonic acid. PIP can significantly inhibit HepG2 cell proliferation, induce cell apoptosis and also inhibited migration and invasion in a concentration-dependent manner. PIP increased reactive oxygen species (ROS), increased the expression of p53, and induced cytochrome c release into the cytoplasm to activate caspase-3. PIP is a promising potential candidate for the therapeutic treatment of hepatic carcinoma via the ROS-mediated mitochondrial apoptosis pathway.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Phellinus igniarius
• polysaccharides
• mitochondrial apoptosis
• AKT/p53 pathway
• HepG2 cells

Acknowledgements

The Authors thank the American Journal Experts for the English language editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The present study was supported the Natural Science Foundation of Ningbo (No. 202003N4217), Ningbo welfare technology applied research (NO. 202002N3158), Visiting Engineer “School enterprise cooperation project” of Zhejiang (No. FG2022003) and Key Laboratory of Ningbo (N0. 20221CXJD030002).