Efeitos antitumorais produzidos por venenos de escorpiões e serpentes em cultura de células de câncer cervical: revisão integrativa

Abstract

Introduction: Among the methods used in clinical medicine to treat different types of cancer, including CC, are surgical removal of the tumor, combined radiotherapy or chemotherapy in the early stage of the disease. Generally, these chemotherapy drugs cause side effects. Given this, it has become an urgent goal to develop chemotherapy drugs from bioactive products, and scorpion and snake venoms have been shown to have a broad spectrum of biological activities. Objective: To review the therapeutic potential of scorpion and snake venom in the literature, in an attempt to establish a scientific basis for the use of these venoms in the treatment of cervical cancer. Methodology: The search was captured using the data sources Pubmed, Lilacs, Web of Science, and the following descriptors (cervical cancer OR uterine cervical neoplasm) AND (snakes OR Snake Venoms OR scorpion OR Scorpion Venoms), in culture of cervical cancer cells. Results: The study identified 45 articles, 32 were considered eligible. However, 22 were excluded because titles and abstracts were considered irrelevant to the topic or did not answer the research question. Subsequently, after reading the full text, 8 studies were included for the integrative review. It was observed that of the 3 studies with scorpion venoms, only 1 promoted cytotoxicity in CC. While the 5 studies with snake venoms all showed selective action for CC strains. Conclusion: In this review we demonstrated that venoms and isolates extracted from snake scorpions are promising for the treatment of CC, promoting cytotoxicity, inhibition of proliferation, cell cycle arrest, death via apotosis and depolarization of the mitochondrial membrane.