Therapeutic potential of anticancer enzymes derived from halophilic microorganisms

Cancer is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality across the globe. Its occurrence is predicted to increase over the next few decades. The commonly used anticancer agents like chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery are associated with severe side effects, drug resistance, and lack of specificity. Therefore, new anticancer agents are urgently needed. In this regard, halophiles, which are extremophilic microorganisms growing optimally under high salt concentration, have shown promising results as sources of bioactive compounds and enzymes with potential therapeutic applications. Halophilic extremophiles have shown to produce enzymes like l-asparaginase, l-methioninase, l-glutaminase, and l-arginase, which have shown anticancer activity against cancer cell lines by inhibiting amino acid metabolism. However, it is important to note that all these enzymes have shown anticancer activity only limited to cell-based studies and their efficacy and safety have not yet been explored in in-vivo cancer cell lines. In addition, some challenges such as immunogenicity and delivery mechanism have to be overcome for the application of these enzymes. This review article discusses the enzymes derived from halophiles with therapeutic applications and their potential applications in anticancer strategies, personalized enzyme therapy and protein engineering and also highlights current limitations and the need of further validation.