⚡RIKEN researchers report a method that uses carbon monoxide produced by cancer cells to kill them.

What it means

Researchers at RIKEN's Biofunctional Synthetic Chemistry Laboratory (RIKEN Pioneering Research Institute) have built a two-part experimental system: a catalyst that gets into cells, plus a precursor molecule. Inside tumor cells the catalyst grabs the cell's own carbon monoxide — tumors tend to overproduce it as a by-product of heme breakdown — and uses it as a carbon building block to stitch together phenanthridinone, a ring-shaped compound that is toxic to cells. Because healthy cells carry far less CO, the lethal chemistry switches on mainly where the CO is, so the drug is essentially manufactured inside the cancer cell rather than given as a finished pill. It is a way of turning a tumor's own metabolic quirk into a self-destruct trigger.