Fig. 1. Honeybee venom and melittin specifically reduce breast tumor cell viability.

a The process of bee venom collection and melittin treatment of breast cancer cells, featuring a honeybee collected in Australia. b Cell-viability assays of a panel of human normal and breast cancer cell lines treated with honeybee venom from Australia (left) or melittin (right), with c the IC₅₀ values (generalized linear models). Cell-viability assays of normal human dermal fibroblasts (HDFa) and breast cancer cell lines (SUM159 and SKBR3) treated with d venom from populations of honeybees in Ireland (left) and England (right) (one-way ANOVA), and e venom from England worker (left) and queen (right) bumblebees. f Absorbance (405 nm) of aqueous solutions of melittin and bee venom assessed by ELISA with the anti-melittin antibody and IgG control (two-way ANOVA). g Cell-viability assays in HDFa and SUM159 cells after blocking melittin using the anti-melittin antibody with honeybee venom (left) and melittin (right). Data are represented as mean ± SEM (n = 3). Differences were considered significant at p < 0.05 (*), p < 0.01 (**), and p < 0.001 (***). See also Supplementary Fig. 1.