A viral video by a veterinarian claiming that the dog deworming medicine fenben cures cancer in humans has been debunked. Sheila Singh, director of McMaster’s Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, said the claims are false and misleading.

Anecdotal videos by a Canadian veterinarian are getting traction on social media platforms like Facebook and TikTok. In the videos, veterinarian Andrew Jones discusses his patient Joe Tippens, who he says was diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer and cured by taking fenbendazole, an antihelmintic medication. According to the article, Tippens was also receiving conventional cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The lack of a control group makes it impossible to attribute the improvement in his condition to fenbendazole alone.

In the lab, a team of researchers found that fenbendazole (FZ) suppresses growth and induces apoptosis in cancer cells. They report that the drug does so by disrupting microtubules, stabilizing p53 and impairing glucose metabolism. They used the human non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cell line H460 to test the effect of FZ on the tumorigenic process, and found that it inhibits the growth of tumors in vitro by lowering their proliferation index and causing them to undergo apoptosis.

Despite the promising results of laboratory studies, the antitumor effect of fenbendazole has never been scientifically confirmed in humans. Moreover, long-term exposure to the drug can cause serious side effects such as liver dysfunction. Patients should inform physicians about any medications they are self-administering and have their blood AST, ALT and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) levels monitored regularly. fenben for humans