Fenbendazole For Humans Cancer
Fenbendazole for humans cancer has been widely used as a broad-spectrum antiparasitic drug in animals, and it is currently available in human dosage forms. This medication has been shown to be effective in treating many parasitic infections such as tapeworm, hookworm and schistosomiasis. It is also known to be active against certain protozoa including Babesia, Trypanosoma and Ehrlichia. The drug is an anthelmintic that causes gastrointestinal upset in some people.
Social media sites are popular tools for spreading medical information and can be a source of unproven health claims. These sites may allow nonmedical individuals to disseminate information that could be harmful to patients. One such case was described in a patient with advanced colon cancer who obtained information on the antitumor effects of fenbendazole from social media sites and subsequently self-administered this agent, which is sold as an anthelmintic for dogs. This resulted in severe liver injury in this patient.
To explore the effects and underlying mechanisms of fenbendazole, we treated EMT6 tumors in BALB/c mice with this drug. We compared the growth of unirradiated tumors, irradiated tumors, and irradiated tumors treated with three daily injections of fenbendazole given either one day before or two hours before radiation (Table 1). As expected, irradiation significantly inhibited the growth of EMT6 tumors. However, the effect of fenbendazole was not significant.
Treatment of EMT6 cells with fenbendazole significantly reduced the number of cells in monolayer culture after 2 h and 24 h treatments. This was accompanied by a reduction in cell clonogenicity, which reflected a loss of the ability of these cells to grow and divide independently of each other. This effect was observed in both p53-wild type and p53 mutant SNU-C5/5-FUR cells.
In addition to the antiproliferative effect of fenbendazole, it also increased the sensitivity of these cells to 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), which is a common chemotherapeutic agent in CRC. This increase in sensitivity is associated with inhibition of autophagy and increased ferroptosis in these cells.
These results suggest that fenbendazole can enhance the antitumor effect of 5-FU in CRC by reducing multidrug resistance through its action on microtubules and mitotic checkpoint signaling pathways. Further studies are warranted to evaluate whether fenbendazole can be effectively combined with other therapies, such as paclitaxel or docetaxel, to treat refractory CRC.
