Recent Advances in Developing Insect Natural Products as Potential Modern Day Medicines

Abstract

Except for honey as food, and silk for clothing and pollination of plants, people give little thought to the benefits of insects in their lives. This overview briefly describes significant recent advances in developing insect natural products as potential new medicinal drugs. This is an exciting and rapidly expanding new field since insects are hugely variable and have utilised an enormous range of natural products to survive environmental perturbations for 100s of millions of years. There is thus a treasure chest of untapped resources waiting to be discovered. Insects products, such as silk and honey, have already been utilised for thousands of years, and extracts of insects have been produced for use in Folk Medicine around the world, but only with the development of modern molecular and biochemical techniques has it become feasible to manipulate and bioengineer insect natural products into modern medicines. Utilising knowledge gleaned from Insect Folk Medicines, this review describes modern research into bioengineering honey and venom from bees, silk, cantharidin, antimicrobial peptides, and maggot secretions and anticoagulants from blood-sucking insects into medicines. Problems and solutions encountered in these endeavours are described and indicate that the future is bright for new insect derived pharmaceuticals treatments and medicines.

Antiviral activity of animal venom peptides and related compounds

“…Melittin, isolated from honey bee (Apis mellifera) venom, is an amphipathic peptide composed of 26 amino acid residues, arranged in two α helical segments. Inserted in nanoparticles, melittin exhibited virucidal activity against HIV-1 in the VK2 cell line, an epithelial vaginal cell line, and also inhibited HIV infection in TZM-bl reporter cells (HeLa cell line expressing HIV receptors) [78][79][80]. Among other antiretroviral mechanisms, melittin complemented the azidovudin reverse transcription inhibition [81,82].…”

Plant‐derived medicinal entomochemicals: an integrated approach to biodiscovery in Australia

“…Species, mostly from Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, Hemiptera, Hymenoptera, Orthoptera and Homoptera, are ingested or applied in all sorts of ways to treat a vast range of internal and external ailments (Costa‐Neto ; Dossey ; Meyer‐Rochow ). The ethnomedicinal applications of insects and their pharmacological properties have been detailed in several excellent reviews (Dossey ; Ratcliffe et al ; Anudita and Deepa ; Meyer‐Rochow ; Seabrooks and Hu ). Bioactive compounds such as phenols, flavonoids, terpenes, saponins, sugars, alkaloids, glycosides and fatty acids have been characterised from a wide variety of insects and shown to have biological activities including antioxidant, anti‐inflammatory, antiproliferative, cytotoxic, analgesic, immunomodulatory, antidiabetic, cardioprotective, anti‐hypertensive, antimicrobial and insecticidal properties.…”

“…A well‐known example is that of the monoterpene, cantharidin, derived from blister beetles (Meloidae) which are traditionally used to treat cancers, warts and skin diseases and to stimulate sexual arousal. Extensive analyses of cantharidin and its analogues or derivatives have revealed powerful antiproliferative, cytotoxic and immunomodulatory activities, making them promising anticancer and immunosuppressive agents; reviewed in Ratcliffe et al () and Seabrooks and Hu ().…”

Considerations for the process development of insect‐derived antimicrobial peptide production

“…Therefore, they are one of the most promising sources for finding new AMPs . Up to now 400–500 natural insect‐derived AMPs have been identified …”

“…6 Up to now 400-500 natural insect-derived AMPs have been identified. 7 Structurally, AMPs are peptides that are traditionally defined as proteins with a length of less than 100 amino acids (aa) and a molecular weight below 5,000 Da (mostly with a high basic isoelectric point). Some exceptions exist, such as when proteins with a length of about 130-150 aa are also included in this class of peptides.…”