In a clinical trial, a promising new American-made drug demonstrated an ability to attack cancer cells, with the potential of halting the disease in patients.

The prototype, tested in Britain, shows promise against a range of cancers, including breast, prostate, bowel, kidney, ovarian and skin cancer, reported Medical News Today.

Professor Paul Workman, who led the research at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, said it "has the potential to be a superdrug because it stops resistance and it attacks the cancer on many fronts."

"But it is only a superdrug once we have shown it works in more patients," he cautioned.

Before the trial, the research team already knew that the drug -- labeled 17AAG -- selectively and potently blocks the growth of a wide range of common cancer cells in the laboratory, causing them to "commit suicide."

The research, published Thursday, was funded by Cancer Research UK and carried out by Institute of Cancer Research scientists at the London hospital. The drug was provided by the National Cancer Institute in the U.S. under an agreement with the American biotech company, Kosan Biosciences Inc.

The drug may be able to tackle cancers that are resistant to other drugs, according to clinical results in two patients with malignant melanoma.

Teams in the U.S. are looking at patients with prostate, breast and kidney cancer.

The drug targets and inactivates a crucial molecule called Hsp90, which cancer cells need to survive.

Healthy cells, on the other hand, are not seriously affected by their loss.

At the same time, the drug targets many molecules vital for growth, including certain proteins. With this multi-pronged attack, the drug acts like several different treatments, reducing the chance that a tumour will develop resistance.

"These results, are very early and, although encouraging, much more work to assess the drug's effect in large numbers of patients still needs to be done," said professor John Toy, Cancer Research UK's medical director. "However, what's particularly exciting about this drug is that it targets so many different features of cancer's machinery all at once, which should make it much more difficult for tumours to develop resistance to treatment."

Professor Peter Rigby, chief executive of The Institute of Cancer Research, said: "This early trial indicates the potential of this drug for future cancer treatment. Although further trials need to be conducted, early indications suggest that the multi-pronged attack by this drug shows promise in treating a range of cancers."