TNF and cancer: Furthermore, lentinan, a neutral polysaccharide purified from the extract of Lentinula edodes mycelia, is now approved to be used in clinical trials as cancer adjuvant therapy, and non-small cell lung carcinoma patients treated on chemo-immunotherapy of lentinan were shown to exhibit an increase in proliferation of cytotoxic T cells, accompanied by the rise in tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), interferon gamma (IFN-γ), and interleukin-12 (IL-12) levels (18).