Further details about the fungal culture conditions and the preparation of the filamentous materials are given in Chung et al . Cell Proliferation Studies Mammalian cell culture systems were used for evaluating bioactivity. A second objective was to determine whether there is a correlation between the chitin content of the materials and their effects on fibroblast proliferation. At high concentrations, the purified fungal preparations had anti-proliferant activity. At lower concentrations, pro-proliferant effects which appeared to correlate with chitin content were observed.
Fibroblasts are responsible for laying down collagen in the wound and hence rebuilding tissue.
It was also found that the hydrogen peroxide generating capacity did not correlate with chitin content in these fungal materials. Fungal filaments are also hollow leading to the possibility of their development as carriers of micro-encapsulated drugs. From a commercial point of view the technology for growing a fungus in a bioreactor is well established. Industrial bioreactors of over 1,000,000 litres in volume are now used for the production of biomass. After growing a fungus in a bioreactor, the resulting broth contains very fine branched filaments which, after suitable processing, can be fabricated in several different ways.