Abstract
Malignant gliomas are rarely curable malignant tumors in the central nervous system. Chlorotoxin (CTX) is a peptide derived from scorpion venom, which can selectively target malignant gliomas. Onconase (Onc) is a small cytotoxic ribonuclease derived from frogspawn that exhibits cytotoxicity against some tumor cells. In the present study, we found that CTX-conjugated Onc (CTX–Onc) shows better anti-tumor effect than the physical mixture of CTX and Onc (CTX + Onc) on the nude mice carrying subcutaneous glioblastoma cell-derived tumor. However, CTX–Onc does not show dose-dependent anti-tumor effect. In addition, apoptosis in tumor tissue does not show significant difference between the treatment groups. Our results confirmed that CTX–Onc has better anti-tumor effect than CTX + Onc and suggest that it can be potentially used for glioma therapy.
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This work was supported by the Chinese Major Scientific and Technological Special Project for “Major New Drugs Creation” (2009ZX09103-656).
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Wang, X., Guo, Z. Anti-gliomas Effect of Chlorotoxin-Conjugated Onconase at High Dose. Cell Biochem Biophys 73, 389–392 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12013-015-0634-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12013-015-0634-4