Exploration Through The Venoms From Hymenoptera As Potential Therapeutic Agents In Cancer Therapy

Side effects and drug resistance are important limitations to the currently available treatments against cancer. It is challenging therefore to search for new drugs that are effective antitumoral agents with slight or no side effects. There is a growing interest in natural products, among which Hymenoptera venoms show promising properties since they exhibit a cytotoxic activity on a variety of cancer cell lines. The objective of this contribution is to provide an updated state of the art on Hymenoptera venoms as potential anticancer agents. The present reviewed literature comprise the pharmacological activity on cancer models of Hymenoptera venoms, with a special attention to bees and wasps venom components. The crude bee venom and the peptides melittin and mastoparan are the most relevant products for various reasons, such as, their cytotoxicity on a variety of cancer cell lines, their diverse mechanisms of action and their ability to potentiate the anticancer activity of existing chemo agents and used clinically against cancer. Hence, Hymenoptera venoms appear as an important potential source for novel anti-cancer drugs, together with scorpions and snakes, the other animal groups that possess venoms with potent and varied pharmacological activities. In vivo studies are still needed to find the more relevant Hymenoptera candidates for clinical trials, opening the way for developing new, original drugs against cancer.