Mahdi Shekarabi - Biotechnology Research Center, Medical Biotechnology Department, Venom and Biotherapeutics Molecules Lab., Pasteur Institute of Iran. Tehran-Iran.
Kamran Pooshang Bagheri - Biotechnology Research Center, Medical Biotechnology Department, Venom and Biotherapeutics Molecules Lab., Pasteur Institute of Iran. Tehran-Iran.
Delavar Shahbazzadeh - Biotechnology Research Center, Medical Biotechnology Department, Venom and Biotherapeutics Molecules Lab., Pasteur Institute of Iran. Tehran-Iran.

Introduction & Aim: Cancer is the most important cause of death in the world. Despite the many therapeutic approaches used to treat cancer, chemotherapy is still the main method of treating cancer. One of the main problems with chemotherapy is that cancer cells usually resist these drugs and the efficacy of chemotherapeutic drugs decreases. Research on snake venom had led to the discovery of some proteins and compounds for treatment of cancers and other human diseases. Methods: Cobra venom was fractionated by using size exclusion chromatography. The toxic fractions were identified by MTT assay and the effect of this toxic fraction was evaluated on both cancer cells and normal cells. Cell proliferation test was performed in order to evaluate its toxic effect on cancer cells.Results: In size exclusion chromatography of Cobra venom, 7 fractions were obtained from which the fraction 5 contained the most toxic effect on colon cancer cells. This fraction leads to 90% death in colon cancer cells, and suppressed the cell proliferation in the cells whereas it only had small cytotoxicity on normal cells.conclusion: In this study, Iranian cobra venom was found to have cytotoxic effects on tumor cells of the colon and also had very limited effect on normal cells. Separation of cobra venom and investigating the effect of each component of venom can help researchers to find a best compound that can cure colon cancer.

Venom, Cobra, snake, colorectal cancer.