This possible new tool for cancer treatment is absolutely terrifying—wasps.
Yes, we’re talking about those things that swarm around the nectar feeders made for humming birds and that can sting you as many times as they want. They’re the most terrifying of flying and stinging insects.
Well, not just any wasp can help cure cancer. One wasp in particular, the Brazilian social wasp, Polybia paulista, produces venom containing an ingredient called MP1 that can selectively kill cancer cells without negatively affecting normal cells, according to a release from Cell Press.
How the heck does this work?
The toxin destroys cancer cells by creating holes in the lipids abnormally distributed on their surfaces. This creates holes in the cells that allow various subcellular parts needed for the cell’s processes to simply leak out.
In normal cells, phospholipids called phosphatidylserine and phosphatidylethanolamine (we’ll just call those PS and PE, respectively) are located in the inner membrane, facing the inside of the cell. In cancer cells, however PS and PE are located in the outer membrane, and face outward, leaving cancer cell lipids vulnerable to the MP1 toxin.
“Cancer therapies that attack the lipid composition of the cell membrane would be an entirely new class of anticancer drugs,” says the co-senior author of the study, Paul Beales, of the University of Leeds in the UK. “This could be useful in developing new combination therapies, where multiple drugs are used simultaneously to treat a cancer by attacking different parts of the cancer cells at the same time.”
The researchers put this theory to the test by creating artificial membranes containing different combinations of PE and PS, exposing them to MP1. They found that MP1 sticks better to membranes with PS present, by a factor of seven to eight. Additionally, the presence of PE helped MP1 to more quickly bore holes in the cell membrane, increasing hole size by a factor of 20 to 30.
“Formed in only seconds, these large pores are big enough to allow critical molecules such as RNA and proteins to easily escape cells,” said João Ruggiero Neto of Sãu Paulo State University in Brazil, the other co-senior study author. “The dramatic enhancement of the permeabilization induced by the peptide in the presence of PE and the dimensions of the pores in these membranes was surprising.”
In the future, the researchers plan to experiment with the MP1 toxin’s amino acid sequence, in order to improve the toxin’s selectivity and distinction between healthy and cancerous cells.
“Understanding the mechanism of action of this peptide will help in translational studies to further assess the potential for this peptide to be used in medicine,” Beales adds. “As it has been shown to be selective to cancer cells and non-toxic to normal cells in the lab, this peptide has the potential to be safe, but further work would be required to prove that.”
These findings are published in the Biophysical Journal.
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Feature image: Prof. Mario Palma/Sao Paulo State University
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