University of Illinois researchers have found a way to trick cancer cells into committing suicide, a technique that could potentially lead to better treatment of various types of cancers.

Most living cells contain a protein known as 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.

"We have identified a small, synthetic compound that directly activates procaspase-3 and induces apoptosis. By bypassing the broken pathway, we can use the cells' own machinery to destroy themselves," said Paul J. Hergenrother, a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Paul Hergenrother, a chemist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has found a way around the natural biological process that kickstarts apoptosis, a synthetic molecule that directly activates procaspase-3.

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

His team screened more than 20,000 different compounds, looking for the one with the ability to turn procaspase-3 into caspase-3. The researchers called the successful molecule "procaspase activating compound number one" (PAC-1).

The scientists found that PAC-1 killed many types of cancer cells.

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

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.