Title:Wasp Venom Toxins as a Potential Therapeutic Agent
Volume: 23
Issue: 8
Author(s): Yashad Dongol, Bhadrapara L. Dhananjaya, Rakesh K. Shrestha and Gopi Aryal
Affiliation:
Keywords:
Antimicrobial peptides, cationic peptides, peptide toxin, therapeutic agents, wasp venom.
Abstract: It is high time now to discover novel drugs due to the increasing rate of
drug resistance by the pathogen organisms and target cells as well as the dependence
or tolerance of the body towards the drug. As it is obvious that significant
numbers of the modern day pharmaceuticals are derived from natural products, it
is equally astonishing to accept that venoms of various origins have therapeutic
potentials. Wasp venoms are also a rich source of therapeutically important toxins
which includes short cationic peptides, kinins, polyamines and polyDNA viruses,
to name a few indentified. Wasp venom cationic peptides, namely mastoparan and
its analogs, show a very important potency as an antimicrobial and anticancer
agents of the future. They have proven to be the better candidates due to their
lesser toxic effects and higher selectivity upon chemical modification and charge optimization. They
also have superiority over the conventional chemical drugs as the target cells very rarely develop
resistance against them because these peptides primarily imparts its effect through biophysical interaction
with the target cell membrane which is dependent upon the net charge of the peptide, its hydrophobicity
and anionicity and fluidity of the target cell membranes. Besides, the other components
of wasp venom such as kinins, polyamines and polyDNA viruses show various pharmacological
promise in the treatment of pain, inflammatory disease, and neurodegenerative diseases such as epilepsy
and aversion.
