3 ms·
Honeybee venom 'kills some breast cancer cells'
- poulsbohemian 4y agoBeekeeper here... I can completely believe that bee venom could be used medicinally. While I know many beekeepers hardly notice stings after a while, I find that mine go through an extensive healing process. I'll spare the gross details, but the week-long process culminates in the sloughing of several layers of necrotic skin. Brilliant idea to figure out this same action could be used against cancerous cells.
- zubairq 4y agoBut can't the bee sting harm you as well?
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoMore than chemo?
- zubairq 4y agoI mean for a normal beekeeper getting stung
- adamredwoods 4y agoI don't think they would administer the treatment in a room full of bees, the same that they would not administer paclitaxel by having a patient eat tree bark.
- nikolay 4y agoMany things can kill cancer cells... or any cells. I am not sure how scientific this statement from the article is: "minimal harm to the other cells." How minimal and what kind of harm? Isn't the goal to find an intervention that only kills cancerous cells and no healthy ones?
- tsol 4y agoYeah what can kill cancer cells in a petri dish and what can be used as chemo are two categories that hardly overlap. But it's still a good first step though. Maybe something will come of it
- nikolay 4y agoDon't get me wrong, I want this to be true! But it is surprising that there's little attention paid to century-old insight of Warburg and only a few researchers are looking into the view that cancer is a metabolic, mitochondrial disease, not a genetic bad luck.
- adamredwoods 4y agoActually pretty interesting: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41698-020-00129-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41698-020-00129-0 >> The majority of the antineoplastic activity of honeybee venom has been attributed to melittin through inhibition of the PI3K/Akt/mTOR axis in breast cancer, MAPK in melanoma, JAK2/STAT in ovarian cancer, and NFκB signaling pathways in lung carcinoma cells1. It's the melittin. They also suggest they can engineer it more, and it could possibly accompany some chemo infusions. Obviously, this could cause anaphylactic shock in patients. Personally, I'm more interested in the cowpea mosaic virus in conjunction with modern immunotherapy: https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/researchers-shed-light-on-why-a-certain-plant-virus-is-so-powerful-at-fighting-cancer https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/researchers-shed-ligh...