Dehydroeburicoic acid, an antileukemic triterpene from the fruiting bodies of dish-cultured Antrodia Cinnamomea

Antrodia cinnamomea (AC), an endemic species, has long been used as a chemopreventive mushroom in traditional Taiwanese medicine. In this current study, we reported a standardized triterpenoids-dependent analysing platform for marketing AC products. Twelve different AC products were collected and evaluated for their triterpenoids content. The results revealed that fruiting bodies from dish-cultures (AC-DC2) had a similar triterpenoids profile compared to wild AC. The AC-DC2 ethanolic extract was subjected to bioactivity-guided isolation and yielded five major cytotoxic triterpenes (1-5). Among them, dehydroeburicoic acid (5) was the most potent cytotoxic component against HL-60 cells while it activated DNA damage, apoptosis biomarkers and also inhibited topoisomerase II. In the xenograft animal model, 5 resulted in a marked decrease of tumour weight and size without any significant decrease in mice body weights. Taken together, our results showed that fruiting bodies from the dish-cultured AC, which had the same major active triterpenoids compared to wild AC, could be considered as one of alternative AC sources.