Yu's Farm Co. Ltd. - Vancouver

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trametes_versicolor

Trametes versicolor — formerly known as Coriolus versicolor and Polyporus versicolor— is an extremely common polypore mushroom which can be found throughout the world. Versicolor means 'of several colours' and it is true that this mushroom is found in a wide variety of different colours. T. versicolor is commonly called Turkey Tail because of its resemblance to the tail of the wild turkey. T. versicolor is recognized as a medicinal mushroom in Chinese medicine under the name yun zhi (simplified Chinese: 云芝, traditional Chinese: 雲芝). In China and Japan T. versicolor is used as in immunoadjuvant therapy for cancer.

Chinese herbal medicines have been used to treat cancer, infection, inflammation, diabetes, heart disease etc for more than three thousand years in China. Until now, their efficacy has not been systematically reviewed. Our team has been working on Chinese medicine since 1997 with research focus on certain bioactive metabolites extract from some Chinese medicinal mushroom. Genomic, proteomic and flow cytometry techniques are used to investigate their anticancer, anti-inflammatory and immune function. We were the first to publish the detailed anticancer mechanisms of polysaccharide peptide (PSP), an extract of the Chinese Medicinal mushroom Yun zhi (Coriolus versicolor, spp). Flow cytometry and cDNA arrays technology were used to identify the cell cycle kinetics, cell death and apoptotic pathways in which PSP exhibits its treatment effect on human leukemia. PSP is currently used in China as adjuvant therapy. Our data show that PSP does not exert cytotoxic effect on normal healthy human cells thus further supports its potential development as chemotherapeutic drug in the west.