Cytotoxic Profiling of the Marine Gastropod (Conus textile) Venom Extracts on Human Cancer Cell Lines Unveiling its Therapeutic Side as Anti-Cancer Therapeutic Agents

Conus marine snails can be identified by their venom compositions, which are complex and comprise a wide variety of pharmacologically potent peptides known as conotoxins. Due to their possible therapeutic usages, these peptides have attracted a lot of attention, especially in the field of oncology. This work aimed to study the cytotoxic effects of venom gland and venom tube extracts from Conus textile on three human cancer cell lines (namely HepG2, hepatocellular carcinoma, Caco2, colorectal cancer, Mcf7, and breast cancer). The present study assessed the venoms' half-maximal inhibitory concentrations (IC₅₀), which represented their effectiveness in lowering cell viability, using an in-vitro experiment. With IC₅₀ values ranging between 94 and 381.97µg/ ml, the results showed that both venom extracts had strong cytotoxic effects on all examined cell lines. When compared to the gland extract, the venom tube extract consistently showed greater potency, which may indicate a higher concentration of active cytotoxic chemicals. When treated with venom tube extract, the Mcf7 cell line showed the lowest IC₅₀ value, suggesting a promising potential for breast cancer therapies. These findings supported the hypothesis that Conus textile venom contains bioactive components with selective toxicity towards cancer cell lines. The insignificant standard deviations reported support  the regularity and dependability of the cytotoxic effects. The present work provided the foundation for future purifying and mechanistic investigations of conotoxins and advanced the investigation of marine natural products as a source of potential anti-cancer drugs.