Not just honey
Bee venom has proven to be extremely effective against aggressive types of breast cancer
Maria Azarova, Naked Science
The honey bee (Apis mellifera) has brought to mankind a number of useful products and substances, such as honey, propolis and poison, used for medical purposes for thousands of years. Despite this, the determining factors and mechanisms of action of bee venom – a product of the secretory activity of the glands of honeybee workers – against cancerous tumors remain poorly understood, especially when it comes to breast cancer, which affects millions of women around the world. According to experts, three times negative breast cancer accounts for 10% to 15% of all cases of this cancer. At the same time, there are no clinically effective methods of its treatment today.
According to scientists from the University of Western Australia and the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research, understanding the molecular basis and specificity of bee venom against cancer cells may be the key to the development and optimization of new therapeutic agents based on an affordable and inexpensive natural product.
As noted in a study published in the journal npj Precision Oncology (Duffy et al., Honeybee venom and melittin suppress growth factor receptor activation in HER2-enriched and triple-negative breast cancer), the active component of bee venom is melittin, which is a positively charged amphipathic peptide of 26 amino acids. It binds to phospholipids of the membrane bilayer and causes cell death, forming transmembrane toroidal pores (holes) with a diameter of about 4.4 nanometers, which help additional small molecules with cytotoxic activity to penetrate into the cell.
In their study, the scientists used the venom of 312 bees and bumblebees, as well as melittin, reproduced synthetically, both in combination with the chemotherapeutic drug docetaxel and without it, to study their anti-cancer properties in laboratory mice. The bees were put to sleep with carbon dioxide and kept on ice while a poisonous thorn was extracted from their bellies. As a result, the team found that both bee venom and melittin not only quickly caused the death of cells of particularly aggressive triple-negative breast cancer and breast cancer cells enriched with the HER2 receptor (it is responsible for the formation of primary resistance to antitumor drugs), but also showed their effectiveness in concentrations that do not affect healthy cells.
"No one has previously compared the effect of bee venom or melittin on various subtypes of breast cancer and normal cells. <...> The poison turned out to be extremely potent. And we found that melittin can completely destroy the membranes of cancer cells in 60 minutes," said Ciara Duffy, lead author of the study. In addition, in just 20 minutes, melittin was able to affect the signaling pathways that are necessary for the growth and division of cancer cells.
Although there are about 20 thousand species of bees, scientists wanted to compare the effect of the Perth bee venom (Australia) with other populations from Ireland and England, as well as with the poison of bumblebees. "It turned out that the venom of European honey bees living in Australia, Ireland and England has an almost identical effect in breast cancer. However, the bumblebee venom could not cause cell death even at very high concentrations," the experts noted.
In the future, they plan to find out which method for delivering melittin to cells will be optimal, as well as to study its toxicity and the maximum tolerated doses.
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