Potential use of snake venom components in cancer treatment

Abstract

Cancer can develop to the extent tumor cells grow, divide and grow into other body tissues. Integrins are a family of cell-surface heterodimeric receptors that play an important role in the development of tumor angiogenesis, growth and metastasis, thus being recognized as an attractive therapeutic target. Snake venom contains low-molecular weight peptides known as “disintegrins” that bind to integrins with high affinity, and prevent their action in cancer. In the next article, we go over the results of investigations, both in vitro and in vivo, which have shown promising results, thus revealing that the use of disintegrins could be a promising alternative for the treatment of different neoplasias.