Anti-tumor and immunomodulatory activities of an exopolysaccharide from Rhizopus nigricans on CT26 tumor-bearing mice

This study was aimed to investigate the anti-tumor and immunomodulatory activities of an exopolysaccharide (EPS) from Rhizopus nigricans. Our results showed EPS could significantly inhibit the tumor growth and increase the immune organs index of CT26 tumor-bearing mice. EPS treatment increased the productions of interleukin-2 (IL-2) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) levels in serum. The increase of percentage of CD8+ cytotoxic T cells among total spleen T lymphocyte was also observed. Furthermore, EPS remarkably stimulate spleen lymphocytes proliferation in the absence or presence of mitogens. In addition, we found that EPS had synergistic effect with chemotherapy and improved immunosuppressive effect induced by 5-Fu. In summary, these findings indicated that the antitumor effects of EPS might be partly due to immune function activation and it might have potential to be used in the treatment for colorectal cancer.