Analysis of chemical composition of polysaccharides from Poria cocos Wolf and its anti-tumor activity by NMR spectroscopy

In this study, we extracted the polysaccharide from Poria cocos Wolf and examined its chemical components using gas chromatography–mass spectrophotometer (GC–MS) and fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectra. Then its anti-tumor effects was investigated via in vivo assays. Chemical analysis revealed that the polysaccharide was composed of ribose, arabinose, xylose, mannose, glucose, and galactose in the molar contents of 1.49, 1.17, 0.62, 10.34, 86.39 and 1.31 μM, respectively, and their corresponding mole percentages were 1.6%, 1.09%, 0.54%, 11.3%, 85.9%, and 1.01%, respectively. After 7 weeks of feeding, the polysaccharide significantly inhibited tumor cells growth and increased serum superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) activities in rats. These results indicate that the polysaccharide possessed strong anti-tumor activity.