Peptide-based cancer therapy: Opportunity and challenge

•Conventional cancer therapies have low specificity and cause severe side effects and toxicities.•Anticancer peptides have high specificity with lower toxicity to normal tissues.•Anticancer peptides could be rapid cleared from the blood and non-target tissues.•Anticancer peptides have low immunogenicity and good solubility.•Development of novel anticancer peptides will provide good opportunities for cancer treatment.

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Conventional cancer therapies mainly focus on mass cell killing without high specificity and often cause severe side effects and toxicities. Peptides are a novel class of anticancer agents that could specifically target cancer cells with lower toxicity to normal tissues, which will offer new opportunities for cancer prevention and treatment. Anticancer peptides face several therapeutic challenges. In this review, we present the sources and mechanisms of anticancer peptides and further discuss modification strategies to improve the anticancer effects of bioactive peptides.