1. Alzahra University of Tehran 2. Karaj Azad University
Abstract
Introduction
Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide. therefore, many studies are underway to innovate more efficient therapeutics in order to boost the quality of life in patients. toxic agents such as immunotoxins have been investigated as a possible therapy for cancer. they are conjugated proteins comprised of a toxin along with an antibody or cytokine that specifically bind to target cells. toxins are mostly ribosome inactivating proteins (rips) that inhibit the eukaryote ribosome. in this research, we suggest using toxins derived from snake venom which is a complex mixture of enzymatic and non-enzymatic proteins.
Methods
We selected laaos, svmps, disintegrins, pla2s, cvf and crisp among svps and ricin, abrin and dt among rips. we used isop database to find snakes carrying these proteins then uniprot and pdb database to discover their sequence and function data. their structures were constructed through phyre2 server, then compared to other similar peptides.
Results
We demonstrated that most of these proteins are smaller than rips, all of them contain several cysteines and are able to make disulfide bonds.
Conclusion
There is an essential need to treat cancer cells by novel therapeutics. svps proved to be one of the best candidates for theirs toxic characteristics. we may use recombinant svps to protect snakes in nature. some svps such as svmps are present in all venom types and some of them such as crisp exist only in small numbers.
