Arsenic, the new way to kill cancer

IT is one of the deadliest poisons – but arsenic can also be used as a drug to kill cancer, doctors have found.

The discovery was made after studies showed that breast cancer rates were lower in places where arsenic was present in public drinking water.

It has been used to treat cancer for hundreds of years in traditional Chinese medicine. And in recent years, arsenic has also been used in chemotherapy – although its use is risky due to its poisonous nature.

Now researchers say that when arsenic trioxide is used in combination with another drug, trans-retinoic acid, it is effective at knocking out a particular enzyme in cancer cells, making chemotherapy even more effective.

Dr Xiao Zhen Zhou, who made the discovery with colleagues at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre in Boston, US, hailed the ‘exciting new possibility’ of using the mix and said it ‘might significantly improve the outcomes of treatment’.