Animal Venoms have Potential to Treat Cancer

Abstract

The resistance to chemotherapeutics by the cancerous cells has made its treatment more complicated. Animal venoms have emerged as an alternative strategy for anti-cancer therapeutics. Animal venoms are cocktails of complex bioactive chemicals mainly disulfide-rich proteins and peptides with diverse pharmacological actions. The components of venoms are specific, stable, and potent and have the ability to modify their molecular targets thus making them good therapeutics candidates. The isolation of cancer-specific components from animal venoms is one of the exciting strategies in anti-cancer research. This review highlights the identified venom peptides and proteins from different venomous animals like snakes, scorpions, spiders, bees, wasps, snails, toads, frogs and sea anemones and their anticancer activities including inhibition of proliferation of cancer cells, their invasion, cell cycle arrest, induction of apoptosis and the identification of involved signaling pathways.