Although various compounds are currently being developed to fight cancer, they all have serious side effects. In addition, tumors can develop resistance to these compounds.
In order to offset the above two shortcomings, scientists have designed a new peptide-based therapy that uses the peptides in wasp venom as a potential new method to prevent breast cancer.
This peptide has the ability to form pores in the plasma membrane of the cell and penetrate into cancer cells, or induce necrosis of cancer cells or trigger apoptosis, and finally lead to the death of cancer cells.
However, this powerful "natural weapon" cannot be used for treatment at present. This is due to its high toxicity and lack of cell specificity. It will not only damage tumor cells, but also affect the patient's healthy cells. Therefore, the researchers devised a means to deliver peptides to tumors in a specific and controllable way and make them accumulate in tumor cells.
The system consists of a carrier polymer loaded with two "components": peptides that bind to tumor cell receptors and toxic peptides from wasp venom. In vitro experiments show that the toxic peptides of wasp venom are fully delivered and distributed in tumor cells and cause their death, while normal cells such as red blood cells are not affected.
The results of the study have been published in the journal JouRNAl of Controlled Release. The study is still at an early stage. The next step is to test its efficacy through in vivo experiments in mice.