Researchers at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research in Australia collected venom from honeybees and bumblebees to test against triple-negative and HER2-enriched breast cancer, two subtypes with few targeted treatments and generally poor outlooks.
Melittin, the peptide that makes bee stings painful, destroyed the cancer cells at concentrations that left normal cells largely unharmed, breaking down their membranes within an hour in lab dishes. Combined with an existing chemotherapy drug, it also slowed tumor growth in mice.
The venom worked by punching holes in the cancer cells' membranes and interfering with growth-signaling receptors on their surface. The work was done in cells and in a mouse model, not in patients, and melittin breaks down quickly in the bloodstream, so turning the finding into an injectable treatment is still an open engineering problem.
Read the original study
Duffy et al., npj Precision Oncology, 2020 · doi.org/10.1038/s41698-020-00129-0
A bee sting's active ingredient, aimed at cancer.
Source
- Duffy, C., Sorolla, A., Wang, E., Golden, E., Woodward, E., Davern, K., Ho, D., Johnstone, E., Pfleger, K., Redfern, A., Iyer, K. S., Baer, B., & Blancafort, P. (2020). Honeybee venom and melittin suppress growth factor receptor activation in HER2-enriched and triple-negative breast cancer. NPJ Precision Oncology, 4, 24. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41698-020-00129-0