Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered the effects of penicillin in 1928 and now it is used to combat a variety of diseases. Now, a lab disaster may lead to a new cancer drug. Could history repeat itself this time?

Apparently, Katherine Schaefer of the University of Rochester Medical Center was quite irked when her cultured cancer cells died because she made a calculation error. Then she realized that her boo-boo could lead to a drug that could combat one of the world's most dreaded disease.

She and her colleagues were testing a compound called a PPAR-gamma modulator - something that was never expected to do anything with cancer. After the lab error, the team ran several tests and found out that it killed "pretty much every epithelial tumor cell lines we have seen". The compound also killed colon tumors in mice without making them sick.

Schaefer also mentioned that the compound is not prone to resistance - which refers to the ability of cancer cells to evolve mechanisms to pump out the drugs that affects it. Apparently, this is the problem being faced by the U.S. National Cancer Institute developed drug, Taxol.