Honeybee venom 'kills some breast cancer cells'

Many things can kill cancer cells... or any cells. I am not sure how scientific this statement from the article is: "minimal harm to the other cells." How minimal and what kind of harm? Isn't the goal to find an intervention that only kills cancerous cells and no healthy ones?

Beekeeper here... I can completely believe that bee venom could be used medicinally. While I know many beekeepers hardly notice stings after a while, I find that mine go through an extensive healing process. I'll spare the gross details, but the week-long process culminates in the sloughing of several layers of necrotic skin. Brilliant idea to figure out this same action could be used against cancerous cells.

Actually pretty interesting: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41698-020-00129-0

>> The majority of the antineoplastic activity of honeybee venom has been attributed to melittin through inhibition of the PI3K/Akt/mTOR axis in breast cancer, MAPK in melanoma, JAK2/STAT in ovarian cancer, and NFκB signaling pathways in lung carcinoma cells1.

It's the melittin. They also suggest they can engineer it more, and it could possibly accompany some chemo infusions.

Obviously, this could cause anaphylactic shock in patients.

Personally, I'm more interested in the cowpea mosaic virus in conjunction with modern immunotherapy: https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/researchers-shed-ligh...