Abstract:
Poria cocos, called FuLing in Chinese, is a traditional Chinese medicinal herb. Poria cocos polysaccharides (PCPs) were extracted from Poria cocos collected from different origins through water extraction and alcohol precipitation. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was applied to establish the fingerprint for 16 batches PCPs. A macrophage cell line RAW274.7 was incubated in different concentrations of 16 batches PCPs. The immunological activity was evaluated based on the proliferation activity of cells as determined by MTT assay and NO production. The immunological activity of 16 batches PCPs were introduced into orthogonal partial least squares analysis to investigate the correlation between monosaccharide compositions and immunological activity. The results showed that PCPs were composed of eight monosaccharides, which were Glc, Gal, Man, Fuc, GlcN, GlcA, Xyl and Ara, respectively. The similarity analysis showed that the similarity of the 16 batches PCPs ranged from 0.980 to 1.000. All the 16 PCPs showed well immunological activities, according to the
in vitro activity evaluations. Mouse macrophages were stimulated with different concentrations of PCPs. NO production increased with the increase of PCPs concentration, which was higher than that of the blank. According to the orthogonal partial least squares analysis, all the monosaccharides from PCPs had relationship with immunological activity. Gal, Ara, Man and Glc were positively correlated with the immunological activity of mouse macrophages, while Fuc, GlcA, GlcN and Xyl were negative correlated with the immunological activity of mouse macrophages. Particularly, Glc, Gal and Man in PCPs significantly contributed to the NO production from mouse macrophages.