Anticancer, antioxidant and antibiotic activities of mushroom Ramaria flava

•The ethanol extract (EE) from Ramaria flava displayed strong anticancer activity.•The water fraction of EE exhibited high DPPH and OH radical scavenging activity.•The EE also showed strong antimicrobial activity and moderate antifungal activity.•Three phenolic compounds from the water fraction were also identified by HPLC.

Ramaria flava is a species of edible mushroom with some bioactivity. The anticancer, antioxidant and antibiotic activities and chemical composition of R. flava ethanol extract (EE) were evaluated. The present study exhibited that the EE displayed the strongest inhibitory activity against tumor cell MDA-MB-231 with an IC50 value of 66.54 μg/mL in three tested tumor cell lines, and the inhibition percent was 71.66% at the concentration of 200 μg/mL (MTT assay). The total phenolic compounds varied among four fractions of the EE from 6.66 to 61.01 mg gallic acid equivalent (GAE) per g dry weight. Water fraction exhibited high DPPH and OH radical-scavenging activities with low IC50 values of 5.86 and 18.08 μg/mL, respectively. Meanwhile, three phenolic compounds from water fraction were also identified by HPLC. The antibiotic activities of the EE were evaluated against three microorganisms and three fungi strains by means of the agar well diffusion method and the poisoned medium technique, respectively. The EE also showed moderate antibiotic activities. These results suggest that R. flava could hold a good potential source for human health.

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