Scientists have identified a small synthetic compound that causes cancer cells to self destruct, throwing up promise of effective and personalised anti-cancer treatment in the future.

Most living cells contain a protein called procaspase-3 which, when activated, changes into the executioner enzyme caspase-3 and initiates programmed cell death called apoptosis.

In cancer cells, however, the signalling pathway to procaspase-3 is broken. As a result cancer cells escape destruction and grow into tumours.

Paul J. Hergenrother, a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and other researchers identified a synthetic compound that directly activates procaspase-3 and induces apoptosis, reported science portal EurekAlert.

The researchers screened more than 20,000 structurally diverse compounds and found that the compound called PAC-1 (procaspase activating compound one) killed cancer cells in 23 tumours obtained from a local hospital.

The researchers tested the compound's efficacy in cell cultures and in three mouse models of cancer.

"This is the first in what could be a host of organic compounds with the ability to directly activate executioner enzymes," Hergenrother said.

"By bypassing the broken pathway, we can use the cells' own machinery to destroy themselves," he said.

"The potential effectiveness of compounds such as PAC-1 could also be predicted in advance and patients could be selected for treatment based on the amount of procaspase-3 found in their tumour cells."

Such personalized medicine strategies are preferential to therapies that rely on general cytotoxins, the researchers say, and could be the future of anti-cancer therapy.

Many cancer treatments use cytotoxins to kill the actively and rapidly dividing cancer cells.