Significant Anticancer Activity of a Venom Fraction Derived from the Persian Gulf Sea Anemone, Stichodactyla haddoni

Chemotherapy is still one of the main therapeutic regimens in cancer patients but its toxicity is a hard challenge for every patient yet. One of the available solutions is tracing for non-toxic anticancer agents from natural resources. Numerous proteins and peptides in the venom of sea anemones are potentially useful agents with pharmacological properties. Concerning to significance of this issue, the current study was aimed to finding a non-toxic anticancer fraction from the venom of the Persian Gulf sea anemone, Stichodactyla haddoni. Anticancer and hemolytic activity of crude venom was evaluated and followed by fractionation using RP-HPLC. Breast, Brain, and Colon cancer cell lines were selected to assessment of anticancer activity and toxicity. IC50 of crude venom on the abovementioned cancer cell lines was as 4.13, 6.58, and 31.54 µg, respectively. According to the results obtained by paired sample t-test and comparison of toxicity of the fractions in normal cell line, F10, designated as hadonin, was determined as the candidate anti-cancer fraction. The non-toxic dose of F10 was 20 ng in which showed respectively 66, 29, and 7 anticancer activities on breast, brain, and colon cancer cell lines. According to results, anticancer activity of hadonin is of high pharmaceutical value to follow its therapeutic potency in animal model. In conclusion, the venom of the Persian Gulf sea anemone contains a potential anticancer agent with reasonable activity at nanogram level against three kinds of cancer cells with no toxicity on normal cells.