Venoms as potential new therapies targeting the epidermal growth factor receptor family

The discovery and development of new breast cancer treatments is vital as current therapies, both targeted and non-targeted have been shown to have toxic side effects and cancers have become resistant to the treatment. The pursuit of new appropriate therapies can be directed towards naturally occurring proteins or peptides found present in nature such as venomous secretions. Understanding where and how breast cancer management started and where it currently stands is key in avoiding failure and covering as many avenues as possible. Although there are a variety of treatment strategies available, breast cancer management is still limited in terms of survival and prognosis. Understanding what those limits are and how they affect treatment response is relevant for future clinical trials. The present review focused on targeted and non-targeted therapies, molecular cancer subtypes and available alternatives for drug development in breast cancer. Among notable alternatives for drug development, venoms are now being utilised in drug discovery research due to their rich variety of small peptides, organic and inorganic compounds. With an estimated 12 million peptides awaiting identification and characterisation, venoms are a collection of diverse and attractive drug development platforms. Currently there have been a number of preliminary studies undertaken using venom and cultured human cancer cells, but more research is needed, not only to inform on the effects, but the need for more research is as relevant as ever, in order to identify as many venom compounds as possible.

This paper will report a number of these studies.