Researchers are always actively seeking new ways to create medications that aid in the fight against cancer. Now scientists from the Universities of Leeds and Warwick in England believe they have developed a new cancer drug that may be hugely beneficial to those who are diagnosed with colon or ovarian cancer.

Their research focused on a range of chemical compounds that are essentially metallic in nature. The elements Ruthenium and Osmium are considered to be similar to platinum and gold, and researchers found that the combination of the two did indeed cause significant cancer cell death in both ovarian and colon cancer cases.

A cancer drug already exists that utilizes platinum in its composition, Cisplatin, but the Ruthenium/Osmium combination was actually able to destroy cancer cells that were resistant to Cispatin, marking a significant step forward.

Cisplatin was introduced in the 1970s and has proved to be one of the more effective cancer drugs available, most impressively having a 95% cure rate when used by patients with testicular cancer. Ever since it was discovered to be so effective, scientists everywhere have been looking for other metallically based compounds that could treat all kinds of cancers.

So it is understandable that there is much excitement over the British team’s findings. Says Dr Patrick McGowan of Leeds University and one of the study’s co authors “Ruthenium and Osmium compounds are showing very high levels of activity against ovarian cancer, which is a significant step forward in the field of medicinal chemistry.”

His colleague Professor Peter Sadler of the University of Warwick is equally as optimistic about the future uses of the new cancer drug, including the fact that the compound has the potential he says to “enable activity to be switched on and off”.

In both Cisplatin and the new cancer drug metal atoms bind themselves to a patient’s DNA molecule which triggers “programmed cell death” or apoptosis as it is medically known.

The research was published in the Journal of Medical Chemistry.

Ovarian cancer affects approximately 1 in every 57 women in the United States and is notoriously difficult to diagnose, as unlike other forms of cancer the disease shows little in the way of early symptoms that are easily recognizable.

Colon cancer, against which the new cancer drug also proved highly effective, is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United States, affecting both men and women and about 1 in 19 Americans will be diagnosed with the disease annually.