Contents: Preface. Foreword. 1. My years of experience in practical application of medicinal mushrooms/Dato Dr. Lim Siow Jin. 2. Mushrooms as food, dietary supplements and medicine-present status and future needs/Manjit Singh, R.C. Upadhyuay and Shwet Kamal. 3. Reishi-Ganoderma lucidum: King of Herbs a medical wonder/K.K. Janardhanan. 4. Medicinal and chemical aspects of some wild mushrooms occurring in Kashmir-India/Abdul S. Shawl and Gulzar A. Bhat. 5. Chinese caterpillar mushroom Cordyceps sinensis: history, biology, collection, culture and medicinal use for cure of human diseases/B.L. Dhar Neeraj Srivastava, Himanshu, Jitindra, Sonika and Priyenka. 6.  Ethnomycology and ethnopharmacology of some edible and medicinal  mushrooms/Varughese George, Salees P. Abraham, Soniamol Joseph, T.P. Ijinu and P. Pushpangadan. 7. Ganoderma lucidum a potential medicinal mushroom: Its cultivation and commercial production/A.K. Bordoloi, Gitarthi Baruah and P.R. Bhattacharyya. 8. Medicinal mushrooms scope for cultivation in Kerala/Lulu Das and P.R. Prathibha. 9. Biodiversity of tropical basidiomycetes from Konkan region and their biological properties/Shilpa A. Verekar and Sunil K. Deshmukh. 10. Recent developments in the prospect of mushrooms as nephroprotective agents: A review/B. Nitha and K.K. Janardhanan. 11. Influence of substrate and supplementation on mycelia growth and yield of Lentinus edodes/Ajay Singh, Sujata Makkar, Anjum Varshney, Jitendra Kumar and Manjit Singh. 12. Ganoderma lucidum terpenes-new scope in cancer therapy/T.P. Smina and K.K. Janardhanan. 13. Cultivation of edible and medicinal mushrooms in Kerala/A.V. Mathew. 14. Ganoderma lucidum (Fr.) P. Karst: A promising target to ameliorate mitochondrial dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease?/T.A. Ajith, N.P. Sudeesh and K.K. Janardhanan. 15. Diversity and conservation of medicinal mushrooms of India/Meera Pandey and S.S. Veena. 16. Evaluation of the safety of proprietary products of Ganoderma lucidum (Fr.) P. Karst: a preclinical study/Ravindran K. Veena, T.A. Ajith and K.K. Janardhanan. 17. Antineoplastic properties of polysaccharides from Phellinus species with special emphasis to Phellinus rimosus (Berk) Pilat/C.R. Meera and K.K. Janardhanan. 18. South Indian medicinal mushrooms a potential source for anticancer drugs/V. Kaviyarasan. 19. Medicinal mushrooms as a source of immunomodulatory compounds/N.M. Krishnakumar, P.G. Latha, S.R. suja and S. Rajasekharan.

Medicinal mushrooms have a long history of use in traditional ancient therapies and contemporary research has validated much of ancient knowledge. The recent research achievements in medicinal mushrooms during the last two decades have given confidence that medicinal mushrooms can contribute greatly to healthcare of humans in 21st century. Clinical practice now in Japan, China, Korea, Russia and several South eastern countries and more recently in USA have recognized the beneficial effects of mushroom derived preparations and their use in therapy. Market for mushroom nutraceuticals in USA is about $15 billion today and the market is growing fast worldwide. Developments in Medicinal Mushroom Biology and Therapeutic Properties addresses the relevance and us of medicinal mushrooms in healthcare. The current book is a compilation of articles written by eminent researchers actively working on ethnomycology, biodiversity and conservation, cultivation, chemistry, pharmacology, practical application, toxicity and therapeutic uses of medicinal mushrooms. Broad range of health concern and the failure of modern medicine to treat several disease conditions makes it an essential reading for students, teachers, clinicians and researchers in health profession as well as biologists, microbiologists and others in biomedical research. The book will be immensely useful to pharmaceutical industries interested in the development of natural product based medicines, dietary supplements nutraceuticals and drugs. (jacket)