This week on Health Watch, we’re talking about preventing, detecting and treating cancer. One challenge in treating cancer is that the drugs that kill cancer cells also damage healthy cells. Scientists are trying to develop new drugs that target only the dangerous cells.

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have developed a synthetic version of a natural cell death compound that causes cancer cells to self-destruct. The synthetic compound destroyed nearly a quarter of the kinds of lung cancer cells it was tested on in the lab, and when mice with lung cancer tumors were injected with the compound, the tumors shrank or even disappeared. Dr. Xiaodong Wang, a UT Southwestern biochemist, says more work needs to be done before this drug can be tested on humans, but it could lead to a treatment that harms only cancerous cells.

Visit http://www.utsouthwestern.org/cancercenter to learn more about UT Southwestern’s clinical services in cancer.