Polysaccharies of higher fungi: Biological role, structure and antioxidative activity

The fungal polysaccharides attract a lot of attention due to their multiple challenging bio-logical properties, such as: anti-tumor, anti-viral, anticomplementary, anticoagulant, hypo-lipidemic, immunomodulatory and immune-stimulatory activities, which all together make them suitable for application in many quite distinctive areas, such as food industry, bio-medicine, cosmetology, agriculture, environmental protection and waste water manage-ment. This article presents results with respect to biological properties, structure and pro-cedures related to the isolation and activation of polysaccharides of higher fungi. It is considered and presented along with a review of the critical antioxidative activity and pos-sible influence of the structural composition of polysaccharide extracts (isolated from these higher fungi) upon their antioxidative properties