The surprising new findings, described in the December issue of the journal Cancer Research, show that in cell culture and animal models carbon monoxide (CO) can both prevent tumor growth in prostate and lung cancers and can amplify the effectiveness of chemotherapy 1,000-fold — while sparing noncancerous tissue from chemo’s sometimes debilitating side effects. "We found that in small, carefully controlled doses, CO not only mimicked the effects of chemotherapy agents by blocking proliferation of cancer cells, but also amplified the toxic effects of the chemotherapy drugs doxorubicin and camptothecin to accelerate cancer cell death," says senior author Leo Otterbein, PhD, an investigator in the Transplant Institute in BIDMC’s Department of Surgery and Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. "Importantly and rather unique is that CO also helped to protect normal tissue from chemotherapy, which is an unfortunate side effect of the treatments." The new discovery appears to hinge on CO’s ability to switch the metabolic state of cancer cells so that tumors essentially work themselves to death…