Immunology and Infectious Diseases

Segula Masaphy has expertise in fungal, mainly mushroom, ecology and biotechnology, including the study of their secondary metabolites bioactivities. Her studies includes the use of fungal cultures for isolating health promoting metabolites, where in earlier project a new antifungal compound belong to the echinocandins group was isolated from a newly isolated Fusarium strain. Currently, her research focuses on biotechnology of the Morchella edible mushroom and its exploitation.

Statement of the Problem: Leishmaniasis is an important infectious disease, caused by a range of Leishmania species, multi-host protozoa parasites transmitted to humans by the sand fly and infecting macrophages. It is an increasing worldwide health problem, including the Mediterranean basin and Israel. Current chemotherapy treatments are limited by their toxic effect, need for long treatment and increasing development of resistance of the parasite cells. Thus, the development of alternative therapies is considered, including the use of herbal and mushroom products. The purpose of this work was to study the effect of extracts from the edible Morchella mushroom on Leishmania survival and growth in in-vitro system.

 

Methodology: Extracts from the mushroom fruiting bodies as well as mycelial cultures were applied into in vitro growth system of Leishmania tropica and L. major promastigote stage cells and their proliferation and survival were determined. Also the toxicity of the extracts against human macrophages was studied. Several fractionation steps of a crude extract were conducted obtaining an aqueous mushroom extract, 80% ethanol fraction, water-soluble polysaccharide fraction and polyphenolic fraction, all were compared.

 

Findings: All four extracts showed anti-leishmanial activity, with the aqueous extract being the most active. The inhibition activity exhibited dose-dependent Leishmania killing activity with no recovery of the cells was recorded after exposure to the mushroom extract. No cytotoxic activity against human macrophages at the same extract concentrations was recorded.