Most existing cancer drugs and treatments are poisons, designed to attack and hopefully kill cancer cells, or at least slow their growth.

But most of these treatments attack not just cancer cells, but healthy cells, too. Thus, people taking the drugs too often suffer horrible side effects on top of whatever havoc the cancer itself is already wreaking. They become thin and weak. They lose their hair and their color.

But now, the next revolution in cancer therapy may have arrived.

It’s called “molecularly targeted therapy.” The treatment consists of drugs designed at the molecular level of the cell to specifically attack and kill only the cancer cells of a specific type of cancer. And they are tailor-made to recognize specific molecules unique to specific cancers. The new method of killing cancer cells– called Caspase Independent Cell Death (CICD), led to the complete eradication of tumours in experimental models.

Currently most anti-cancer therapies, which include chemotherapy, radiation and immunotherapy, work by killing cancer cells through a process called apoptosis. This process activates proteins called caspases, leading to cell death.

But in apoptosis, therapies often fail to kill all cancer cells, leading to disease recurrence, and can also have unwanted side effects that may even promote cancer. Scientists at the University of Glasgow wanted to develop a way to improve therapy that induces cancer cell killing while also making sure to limit unwanted toxicity “Our research found that triggering Caspase-Independent Cell Death (CICD), but not apoptosis, often led to complete tumour regression,” said Dr Stephen Tait, Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute, Institute of Cancer Sciences.

“Especially under conditions of partial therapeutic response, as our experiments mimic, our data suggests that triggering tumour-specific CICD, rather than apoptosis, may be a more effective way to treat cancer.”

Unlike apoptosis, which is a silent form of cell death, when cancer cells die through CICD, they alert the immune system through the release of inflammatory proteins. The immune system can then attack the remaining tumour cells that evaded initial therapy-induced death.

The researchers used bowel cancer cells grown in the lab to show the advantage of killing cancer cells via CICD. Experts also said the benefits could work with other types of cancer.

He added: “In essence, this mechanism has the potential to dramatically improve the effectiveness of anti–cancer therapy and reduce unwanted toxicity.

“Taking into consideration our findings, we propose that engaging CICD as a means of anti-cancer therapy warrants further investigation.