Can Fenbendazole Treat Cancer?
Fenbendazole is an antiparasitic medication used to treat parasitic worm infections in dogs. It has also been reported to reduce cancer cell growth in test tube (in vitro) experiments. However, there is no evidence that fenbendazole can cure cancer in people.
An anecdotal report of a woman whose small-cell lung cancer went into remission after she took oral fenbendazole has been making the rounds on social media platforms like Facebook and TikTok. The woman, who has not been named, had been taking fenbendazole as an alternative medicine to conventional chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
According to the article, she was diagnosed with stage IV small-cell lung cancer in 2019 and started taking fenbendazole, which is normally prescribed for dog worms, at the recommendation of a friend. She had also been taking pembrolizumab, a tumor-treating immune checkpoint inhibitor, since early 2019.
In the animal study reported in Scientific Reports, mice were treated with fenbendazole, which was administered three times daily i.p., starting when the tumors became palpable and continuing until they reached a total volume of 1000 mm3. Neither local tumor invasion nor lymph node metastases were detected in fenbendazole-treated mice compared with control mice after irradiation.
The authors report that fenbendazole reduced the number of irradiated cells and the clonogenicity of 5-fluorouracil-resistant SNU-C5 cells. In addition, fenbendazole was associated with reduced autophagy and increased ferroptosis in 5-fluorouracil-resistant cells. These results suggest that fenbendazole is a potent microtubule stabilizing agent with antitumor activity comparable to that of cytotoxic drugs.fenbendazole cancer