Review Article State of the Art in the Studies on Crotamine, a Cell Penetrating Peptide from South American Rattlesnake

Copyright © 2014 Irina Kerkis et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Animal venoms comprise a naturally selected cocktail of bioactive peptides/proteins and other molecules, each of which playing a defined role thanks to the highly specific interactions with diverse molecular targets found in the prey. Research focused on isolation, structural, and functional characterizations of novel natural biologics (bioactive peptides/proteins from natural sources) has a long way to go through from the basic science to clinical applications. Herein, we overview the structural and functional characteristics of the myoneurotoxin crotamine, firstly isolated from the South American rattlesnake venom. Crotamine is the first venompeptide classified as a natural cell penetrating and antimicrobial peptide (CPP andAMP)with amore pronounced antifungal activity. In contrast to other known natural CPPs and AMPs, crotamine demonstrates a wide spectrum of biological activities with potential biotechnological and therapeutic values. More recent studies have demonstrated the selective in vitro anticancer activity of crotamine. In vivo, using a murine melanoma model, it was shown that crotamine delays tumor implantation, inhibits tumo