Novel Peptide Therapeutic Approaches for Cancer Treatment

Abstract

Peptides are increasingly being developed for use as therapeutics to treat many ailments, including cancer. Therapeutic peptides have the advantages of target specificity and low toxicity. The anticancer effects of a peptide can be the direct result of the peptide binding its intended target, or the peptide may be conjugated to a chemotherapy drug or radionuclide and used to target the agent to cancer cells. Peptides can be targeted to proteins on the cell surface, where the peptide–protein interaction can initiate internalization of the complex, or the peptide can be designed to directly cross the cell membrane. Peptides can induce cell death by numerous mechanisms including membrane disruption and subsequent necrosis, apoptosis, tumor angiogenesis inhibition, immune regulation, disruption of cell signaling pathways, cell cycle regulation, DNA repair pathways, or cell death pathways. Although using peptides as therapeutics has many advantages, peptides have the disadvantage of being easily degraded by proteases once administered and, depending on the mode of administration, often have difficulty being adsorbed into the blood stream. In this review, we discuss strategies recently developed to overcome these obstacles of peptide delivery and bioavailability. In addition, we present many examples of peptides developed to fight cancer.

Bee venom-loaded EGFR-targeting peptide-coupled chitosan nanoparticles for effective therapy of hepatocellular carcinoma by inhibiting EGFR-mediated MEK/ERK pathway

“…Consequently, anti-EGFR-targeted therapy may provide a therapeutic power or provide a breakthrough in the treatment of HCC. Here, the synthetic GE11 peptide (12-amino-acid), with the sequence YHWYGYTPQNVI, is an effective peptide for targeting EGFR, making it one of the best options for the development of EGFR-targeted drug delivery systems [ 7 ].…”

The Different Temozolomide Effects on Tumorigenesis Mechanisms of Pediatric Glioblastoma PBT24 and SF8628 Cell Tumor in CAM Model and on Cells In Vitro

“…Cancer cell proliferation may involve a non-oncogenic structural protein, such as PCNA, which acts as a "hub" for large cellular complexes that is essential for tumor growth and cancer cell survival. Drugs reducing PCNA expression in tumor cells are expected to have a broader anticancer therapeutic spectrum than medicines targeting specific signal proteins [43]. The control SF8628 tumor had significantly more PCNA-positive cells than the PBT24 control.…”

Boosting curcumin activity against human prostatic cancer PC3 cells by utilizing scorpion venom conjugated phytosomes as promising functionalized nanovesicles

“…Peptide-conjugated dosage forms have attracted attention in cancer therapy (Hawryłkiewicz & Ptaszyńska, 2021 ; Li et al., 2021 ). Scorpion venom (SV) is a diverse and pleiotropic natural peptide and possesses potent anticancer properties (Alhakamy et al., 2020a ).…”