Roridin E, a constituent of Podostroma cornu-damae, has excellent medicinal properties and exhibits powerful anticancer effects. However, being a poisonous mushroom, P. cornu-damae is difficult to find in its natural environment. Therefore, only a limited amount of roridin E is isolated from P. cornu-damae. We isolated roridin E from mycelial culture medium of P. cornu-damae and examined its effects on five breast cancer cell lines. The purity of the isolated roridin E was 96%. It exhibited anticancer effects on all five breast cancer cell lines, with an IC50 of at least 0.0006 mg/L. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on the investigation of effects of roridin E isolated from the mycelium of P. cornu-damae mushrooms on five breast cancer cell lines. However, safety issues should be investigated and addressed in future studies before roridin E is used in clinical settings.

Roridin E, produced by Podostroma cornu-damae, is a mycotoxin with anticancer activity. To increase the content of roridin E, submerged culture conditions were optimized using response surface methodology. Three factors, namely, medium initial pH, incubation time and agitation speed were optimized using a Box–Behnken design. The optimum submerged culture conditions to increase the content of roridin E included a medium with an initial pH of 4.0, an incubation time of 12.90 days, and an agitation speed of 63.03 rpm. The roridin E content in the submerged culture, under the aforementioned conditions, was 40.26 mg/L. The findings of this study can help lower the current price of roridin E and promote its related research.