While studies using cancer cells in petri dishes or mice can sometimes look promising, we don’t know something will work in people until it is tested in clinical trials. A specialist cancer information nurse from Cancer Research UK told Full Fact there is “insufficient evidence that fenbendazole can cure cancer” and it hasn’t been proven to be safe or effective in human clinical trials.

There are some anecdotal reports of a cancer patient named Joe Tippens who claims that taking fenbendazole along with other supplements led to his complete remission from cancer in 2016. He also says that he was enrolled in a clinical trial and receiving conventional treatments at the time, so it is hard to attribute his remission solely to fenbendazole.

Mebendazole is a member of the benzimidazole family of drugs and is used to treat parasitic infections in animals. Studies have shown that benzimidazoles can slow the growth of cancer cells in laboratory tests.

For example, in a study of glioblastoma brain cancer cells, Markowitz et al. found that a prior treatment with mebendazole made the cancer cells more sensitive to radiation, so it took less radiation to kill the cells. The researchers also observed that fenbendazole disrupted DNA repair mechanisms, causing the radiation to more effectively target the cancer cells.

Another study looked at the effect of fenbendazole on 5-fluorouracil-resistant colorectal cancer cells. They found that fenbendazole increased the sensitivity of the cells to radiation and reduced their viability. The research also suggested that fenbendazole might be able to cause cancer cell death by inhibiting glucose uptake, disrupting microtubule function, and decreasing the expression of GPX4 which can trigger ferroptosis. fenbendazole cancer treatment