The drug fenbendazole, used to treat parasites in animals, might be able to cure humans of cancer. But so far, there has been no peer-reviewed evidence that it does. A specialist cancer information nurse told Full Fact that “people must remember that although research in cells and animal models can look promising, we don’t know if something will work (or be safe) until it is tested in humans.”
In three experiments, mice were stratified by tumor volume at randomization and treated with either docetaxel or fenbendazole administered orally via a syringe (i.p.) twice daily. The time needed for each tumor to grow from the volume at stratification to four times that volume was measured and compared between groups. The results showed that fenbendazole did not affect the growth of unirradiated or irradiated tumors and that it had additive toxicities when combined with docetaxel.
A number of proteins involved in necroptosis were analyzed after treating SNU-C5 and SNU-C5/5-FUR cells with fenbendazole. Immunoblotting analyses revealed that fenbendazole caused an increase in the levels of the following proteins:
Focus group interviews were conducted with lung cancer patients who were being treated at a hospital. The interviewees’ ages ranged from 56 to 75 years. Some of them got the information about fenbendazole from acquaintances, while others heard about it on TV news or YouTube. A majority of the patients regarded this information as false and ineffective. fenbendazole for humans cancer