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The fruiting bodies of a variety of fungi are used in
traditional Chinesemedicines. Cordyceps sinensis, Ganoderma
lucidum and Coriolus versicolor arethree medically important
fungi which have attracted great attention in recentyears for
their biological and pharmacological activities. There have been
in the literature many studies on the relationship between the
function and structure of polysaccharides. Herbal fungi
polysaccharides, which are known asbiological response modifers(
BRM), can modulate the recipient''s immunological activities,
thus presenting a great potential in the treatment of cancers
and other diseases. The polysaccharides extracted from
medicinal fungi is usually a mixture of proteins and
polysaccharides. At this stage, the compnents are generally not
yet purified, therefore the pharmacologically active compounds
are not identifiable. The objecttive of this research is to
develop an effective and convenient method so as to further
purify the biologically active components for pharmacokinetic
and clinical studies in the future. We have extracted
crude polysaccharides from the above three species, and then
treated the extracts with ultrasonication for different
durations. The water-soluble suspension is analyzed by using
the Gel Permeation Chromatographywith various methanol
concentrations. The results showed sharp resolution. In
summary, our results showed that the ultrasonication and organic
mobile phase in couple with the GPC analysis can greatly enhance
the resolution, hence the biologically active compounds can be
better purified for strcutural identification and for further
pharmacokinetic and clinical studies.
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