Can a Dog Dewormer Cure Cancer?
A number of posts on Facebook and TikTok are claiming that a dog deworming medicine cures cancer. In fact, the claims are unfounded and the drugs in question — fenbendazole (also known as mebendazole or albendazole) — are not approved for human use. The drug is a member of the benzimidazole class of medications, which are used to treat parasites in both humans and animals. It works by cutting off the parasite’s supply of nutrition by inhibiting the formation of tubulin, which is a micro-skeleton for the inner cells and also acts as a highway for transport.
However, despite the lack of evidence supporting fenbendazole as an anticancer medication for people, cancer patients around the world have been repurposing the drug in their own self-treatment regimens. These regimens usually involve taking fenbendazole along with CBD oil and vitamin E. The regimen has been dubbed the Joe Tippens protocol, and many are reporting that it has cured their cancer.
The anecdotal reports of successful treatment using fenbendazole have cancer researchers raising eyebrows, but they’re not entirely dismissive of the drug’s potential as a potential anticancer agent. In fact, preclinical studies have shown that fenbendazole can reduce tumours in mice by inhibiting the growth of the proteins that drive their development.
In a paper published in the journal Science, researchers demonstrated that fenbendazole and its close cousin, NEN (which is soluble in human cells), can suppress the development of cancerous liver tissue grafted into experimental mice. The NEN-fenbendazole combo also reversed the expression of disease genes in the hepatocellular carcinoma, or HCC, tissues of the mice. dewormer for cancer