5.6.1. Codonopsis pilosula (Franch.) Nannf

Roots of C. pilosula (poor's man ginseng or dang shen) represent a well-known therapeutic remedy part of the Chinese herbal medicine practice. Its extracts share the same properties of P. ginseng. The polysaccharide fraction of this species has been reported to exert immunomodulatory and anti-inflammatory effects (Chu et al., 2016). From an extract of roots of C. pilosula in 2014 Chen and coworkers obtained a library of 9 Se-Ps with a very low Se content ranging from 94 μg/g to 478 μg/g. The selenylated polymer with highest content of Se was assayed as a growth inhibitory agent against a panel of three human cancer cell lines, namely HeLa (cervical cancer), BGC823 (gastric cancer), and A549 (lung carcinoma) in the concentration range 25–400 μg/mL. A dose-dependent effect, higher than the native polysaccharide, was noted. The best inhibitory activity was recorded towards A549 cells, but no reference drugs have been used. Thus, it is hard to refer about the effectiveness of Se-Ps from C. pilosula as in vitro anti-cancer agents.