Bioactive peptides: an alternative therapeutic approach for cancer management

Front Immunol. 2024 Jan 24:15:1310443. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1310443. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Cancer is still considered a lethal disease worldwide and the patients' quality of life is affected by major side effects of the treatments including post-surgery complications, chemo-, and radiation therapy. Recently, new therapeutic approaches were considered globally for increasing conventional cancer therapy efficacy and decreasing the adverse effects. Bioactive peptides obtained from plant and animal sources have drawn increased attention because of their potential as complementary therapy. This review presents a contemporary examination of bioactive peptides derived from natural origins with demonstrated anticancer, ant invasion, and immunomodulation properties. For example, peptides derived from common beans, chickpeas, wheat germ, and mung beans exhibited antiproliferative and toxic effects on cancer cells, favoring cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. On the other hand, peptides from marine sources showed the potential for inhibiting tumor growth and metastasis. In this review we will discuss these data highlighting the potential befits of these approaches and the need of further investigations to fully characterize their potential in clinics.

Keywords: anticancer; bioactive peptide; cancer immunotherapy; cancer therapy; immunomodulation.

Publication types

  • Review
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Apoptosis
  • Cell Cycle Checkpoints
  • Humans
  • Neoplasms* / drug therapy
  • Peptides / chemistry
  • Quality of Life*

Substances

  • Peptides

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.32000802), Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangzhou, China(No. 202102020181), Research Grant of Key Laboratory of Regenerative Medicine, Ministry of Education, Jinan University, China (No. ZSYXM202203) and Russian Science Foundation (No. 21-75-30020).