Cytotoxic effect of wasp venom peptides in breast cancer cells

• Autor(a) principal: Soares, Susana Isabel Nascimento
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/33578
• topic: Breast cancer; MCF-7; MDA-MB-231; Wasp venom; Polybia dimorpha; Chartergellus communis; Antitumor potential; Cellular cytotoxicity; Prolistarin; Chartergellus-CP1

Currently, cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world and a clear threat to public health, leading to the death of almost 10 million people per year. Breast cancer, specifically, remains the most common cancer in women. Their complications and associated deaths highlight the need to develop new therapeutic agents to combat the disease. Venoms are mostly composed of an extensive and complex panoply of natural and biologically active chemical compounds, that are effective against various pathogenic microorganisms and some diseases, such as cancer. Several studies reported that a wide variety of viper, scorpion, and bee species produce venoms with compounds that have strong anti-tumor properties. However, some species in the Vespidae family are still poorly studied in terms of their antitumor potential, for example the social wasp species Polybia dimorpha and Chartergellus communis, which has no associated studies on this subject. Thus, in order to evaluate the antitumor potential of two new peptides from the social wasps P. dimorpha (Prolistarin) and C. communis (Chartergellus-CP1), assays were performed to determine their cytotoxicity against two breast cancer cell lines: the MCF-7 cell line and the MDA-MB-231 cell line. These lines were exposed to different concentrations of each peptide, for 24h and 48h, in order to evaluate their cell viability along time exposure. Prolistarin showed no relevant cytotoxicity against the studied cell lines. In contrast, the Chartergellus-CP1 peptide proved to be highly cytotoxic against both cell lines, promoting a high dose-dependent antitumor action. Thus, IC20 and IC50 of Chartergellus-CP1 were used to assess cell cycle dynamics, intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and apoptosis in both breast cancer cell lines. The results showed, for both cell lines, Chartergellus-CP1 leaded to a significant increase of cells in the S phase of the cell cycle, as well as to a high generation of ROS (being more evident in the MCF-7 cell line). We predict that this ROS production is associated with cell death in both cell lines, as both cells showed a significant increase of cells in early apoptosis when exposed to IC50. This dissertation demonstrated, for the first time, that the Chartergellus-CP1 peptide from the venom of Chartergellus communis wasps has high potential in breast cancer treatment.