Cancer ResearchScientists turn cancer cells' own carbon monoxide into a weapon that makes anticancer drugs inside tumors
Cancer treatment faces a basic problem: drugs that kill tumor cells often harm healthy tissue too. Researchers at Japan's RIKEN Pioneering Research Institute, led by Katsunori Tanaka, tested a different approach. Many cancer cells release unusually high amounts of carbon monoxide. The team used that gas as a trigger. They packed a palladium-based compound called a palladacycle inside albumin, a blood protein, to shield it from deactivation by glutathione. Inside cancer cells, the excess carbon monoxide drives a reaction that produces phenanthridinone, a molecule whose derivatives are toxic to cells and already appear in anticancer drugs. In laboratory experiments, the compound produced the drug inside cancer cells without making the same toxic products in healthy cells. The work was published in Nature Communications. It is still early, cell-based research, so it is not a treatment for patients yet. It does show a route toward safer, more selective chemotherapy alternatives.
