Recent Advances in Developing Insect Natural Products as Potential Modern Day Medicines

Table 4

Examples of recent studies on the use of cantharidin.

Cells treated	Results	References
(1) Human colorectal cancer cells	Reduced CDK1 kinase activity, apoptosis induction through mitochondrial and death receptor pathways, and activation of caspases 8, 9, and 3	Huang et al. [85]
(2) Human bladder carcinoma cells	Blocked activities of matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) and/or MMP-9 resulting in an antimetastatic effect	Huang et al. [86]
(3) Human breast cancer cells	Reduced adhesion and migration by repressed cell adhesion to platelets by downregulation of 𝛼2 integrin adhesion molecule	Shou et al. [87]
(4) Yeast CRG1 (cantharidin resistance gene 1)	Details of transcriptional regulation of the CRG1 gene for methyltransferase, during cantharidin stress	Lissina et al. [79]
(5) Hepatocellular carcinoma cells	A new gene therapy approach to kill hepatocellular carcinoma cells by inhibiting PP2A with the α-fetoprotein promoter enhancer linked to the pgk promoter	Li et al. [88]
(6) Normal rats	Design of cantharidin solid lipid nanoparticles as drug carriers which can be given orally	Dang and Zhu [89]