Tarantulas and Crabs May Help Cure Drug-Resistant Melanoma
Australian researchers found that peptides isolated from the Brazilian tarantula and Japanese horseshoe crab can “kill metastatic melanoma cells”
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(Left) Brazilian tarantula; (Right) Japanese horseshoe crab.The Brazilian tarantula and the Japanese horseshoe crab might be key in helping battle certain types of skin cancer.
According to a new study, Australian researchers have found that the peptides isolated from the two animals have killed drug-resistant melanoma cells.
Researchers from Brisbane’s Translational Research Institute (TRI) found that the peptides “kill metastatic melanoma cells that are sensitive, tolerant, or resistant to [the cancer drug] dabrafenib,” the study, published in Pharmacological Research Dec. 16, says.
“Nature designed these peptides to fight bacterial infection by targeting the cell membranes of the bacteria. We have modified the peptides and applied them to cancer cells to act in a similar way and attack the cancer cell membrane without impacting non-cancerous cells,” Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Professor Sonia Henriques said in a release.
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Stock image of melanoma.Related: Sam Champion Undergoes Lengthy Surgery for Skin Cancer That Left Him 'Overwhelmed'
But the peptides didn’t just kill “highly proliferative [rapidly growing] melanoma cells,” Henriques continued. “They also kill the dormant cells and those that have gained resistance.”
She explained that due to the speed with which the animal peptides work to kill the melanoma, the cancer cells did not “remodel their cell membrane composition or develop resistance to peptide treatment.”
“This is potentially significant because the main issue in treating cancer patients is that they eventually gain resistance to their current therapy,” she said.
The study was conducted on mice, and the researchers said they are about five years worth of research away from clinical human trials.
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(Left) Brazilian tarantula; (Right) Japanese horseshoe crab.Related: 15-Year-Old Creates a Soap That Could Help Prevent and Treat Skin Cancer
As the study’s first author, Dr. Aurelie Benfield, from QUT's School of Biomedical Sciences, said, this could be “beginning of a great new future for therapeutic peptides.”
“Peptides are thus well suited as templates to design new anticancer therapeutic strategies,” the study says, but as Benfield pointed out, it all comes down to money: “If we can get funding and interest from industry,” she said, “Hopefully we can accelerate things very quickly.”
Melanoma is “one of the better-known types of skin cancer,” Verywell Health reports. “In the U.S., there are about 106,000 cases per year and about 7,100 people die from it annually.”
Although it’s not the most common type of skin cancer, the American Academy of Dermatology Association reports that “melanoma rates in the United States have been rising rapidly" in recent years.
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