Scientists have developed a method to help identify the effectiveness of anti-cancer drugs, it has been revealed.

Researchers from the University of Glasgow's Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute say the technique, called mito-priming, will be an invaluable tool to help understand how cancer cells die.

The team now hopes their discovery can be used to screen for new drugs and help find new ways to kill cancer cells.

They say mito-priming could play a key part in the development of a new class of drugs called BH3 mimetics. These drugs target a family of proteins called BCL-2 proteins, which function to keep cancer cells alive.

The lead author of the paper, Dr Stephen Tait, said: "We have developed a new way to make any cell type sensitive to BH3-mimetic treatment. We term this method mito-priming.

"Mito-priming can be used to rapidly screen for new BH3-mimetics and other anti-cancer drugs, and should improve ways to kill cancer cells. It can also be used to rapidly define the potency and specificity of BH3-mimetics. Finally, the technique will allow us to understand how drug resistance occurs thereby allowing us to prevent this from happening in the first place.

"There is currently a lot of interest in targeting BCL2 proteins in the fight against cancer and there will be new therapies emerging in the future. We are hopeful our new method of mito-priming can be used as a platform to discover new drugs to target BCL-2 proteins."