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What if we could use a cancer's own byproduct to make drugs that destroy tumor cells from the inside? That is what Katsunori Tanaka and his team have done at the RIKEN Pioneering Research Institute (PRI) in Japan.

Published in Nature Communications, the proof-of-concept study describes how a synthetically designed compound uses the excess carbon monoxide produced in tumor cells to trigger the production of anticancer drugs within the cells themselves. Treatment methods based on this technique would be ideal as they selectively target tumors and avoid harming healthy cells.

For cancer treatment to be the most effective, it must kill the cancer without producing harmful side effects. For traditional chemotherapies, the side effects may end up being just as harmful as the cancer. Tanaka and like-minded researchers are trying to improve treatments by devising new technologies that selectively target tumors.

At RIKEN, rather than injecting the body with cancer-killing drugs, Tanaka's goal is to eventually inject patients with harmless compounds that can be used to make drugs on the fly after they are picked up by cancer cells.

Most of us know about carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas commonly produced by the burning of gasoline in car engines. Recently, research has shown that many types of cancer cells also produce this gas. This makes carbon monoxide a kind of cancer biomarker, but only if it can be detected.

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