When it comes to finding innovative cancer solutions, researchers are constantly searching for options. Fenben, a medication that is commonly used in the vet’s office to deworm animals, has caught the attention of researchers for its unexpected effects against rogue cells often associated with cancer.
Although fenbendazole has been used to treat parasites in humans, it has never been tested on people with cancer. In fact, there are only two small clinical studies completed for this purpose, listed on PUBMED – the world’s largest medical database. The drug has also never been approved by the FDA for use as a cancer treatment.
However, a patient with advanced nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC) self-administered fenbendazole to treat her cancer based on information she obtained from social media and experienced severe liver dysfunction. We investigated whether fenbendazole has antitumor activity using a colony formation assay. We showed that 24-h incubation with fenbendazole significantly reduced the clonogenicity and number of EMT6 cells in monolayer cultures.
We compared tumor growth in mice treated with fenbendazole and untreated control mice by measuring tumor volume at four time points after different treatments. There was no significant difference in tumor growth between groups for either irradiated or unirradiated tumors. In addition, we analyzed the effect of fenbendazole on cancer-related cell functions including migration, invasion, and metastasis in a model of colony-forming assay with human cells. Our results suggest that fenbendazole has both cytotoxic and apoptotic properties in human cancer cells, and that these effects may be enhanced by the presence of oxygen.fenben for humans