Although chemotherapy is the most commonly
used method to treat patients with cancer, the application of
chemotherapeutic techniques is limited by their high cellular
toxicity due to their lack of selectivity against cancer cells as well as
the occurrence of other long-term side effects. Therefore, the
ultimate goal of cancer chemotherapy is the development of new
therapeutic selective agents that can kill malignant tumor cells or
render them benign without affecting normal cells
As a part of our continuing research for exploring the bioactive
principles of Ganoderma lingzhi, we report the isolation of eight
triterpenes including two new ones triterpene acid ethyl esters.
The new compounds have a strong to moderate selective cytotoxic
activity against MCF-7 while they showed moderate to weak
activity against HeLa cell line without causing any cytotoxic
activity to normal cell lines (TIG-1 and HF19). We reported also