Tech: New cancer treatment?

SlashDot (aka /. ) says

Cancer Drug Found; Scientist Annoyed

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16975360/

This is good!:

A cancer researcher's carefully cultured cells were dead. Katherine Schaefer was annoyed, but just a few minutes later, the researcher realized she had stumbled onto a potential new cancer treatment.

She has discovered a new way to attack tumors that have learned how to evade existing drugs. It seams that tests in mice suggest the compound helps break down the cell walls of tumors, almost like destroying a tumor cell’s skeleton.

I made a calculation error and used a lot more than I should have. And my cells died,” Schaefer said.

A colleague overheard her complaining. “The co-author on my paper said,’ Did I hear you say you killed some cancer?’ I said ‘Oh’, and took a closer look.”

They ran several tests and found the compound killed ”pretty much every epithelial tumor cell lines we have seen,” Schaefer said. Epithelial cells line organs such as the colon, and also make up skin.

It also killed colon tumors in mice without making the mice sick, they reported in the journal International Cancer Research.

Slashdot report above, original report at MS-NBC HERE