In 2020, Ciara Duffy and a team from the Harry Perkins Institute in Australia studied how honeybee venom and its main part, melittin, affect breast cancer cells. They tested it on lab samples of triple-negative and HER2-enriched breast cancers, two hard-to-treat types, using venom from European honeybees and compared it to bumblebee venom.

A mouse study presented at ENDO 2025 by University of Michigan researchers found that tirzepatide (marketed as Mounjaro/Zepbound) caused ~20% weight loss in obese mice and dramatically slowed breast tumor growth, linking fat loss directly to improved cancer outcomes.