A news article claimed that fenbendazole, an antiparasitic drug used to treat parasitic infections in animals, cures cancer. This led to a national panic among cancer patients in Korea, and fenbendazole sales skyrocketed. Several studies show that this drug is effective in slowing tumor growth in cell culture and animal models. However, fenbendazole has never been proven to cure cancer in humans.
The fenbendazole scandal originated in 2020 when an American cancer patient Joe Tippens claimed that the use of fenbendazole, an anthelmintic drug used to treat various parasites in dogs, cured his terminal lung cancer. Despite the fact that Tippens enrolled in a clinical trial of Kitruda, a cancer drug developed by MD Anderson Cancer Center in the U.S., and was also undergoing other conventional treatments at the time, his claim spread nationwide in Korea.
We examined the acquisition patterns and perception of false information by conducting an in-depth interview with cancer patients who were exposed to the fenbendazole scandal. The results indicated that most of the participants acquired information about fenbendazole from TV, and actively searched for information on the topic in online communities or portal sites. However, the quality of the information was poor as it was heavily processed and filtered by media.
Benzimidazole antihelmintic drugs such as albendazole and fenbendazole can inhibit the growth of tumor cells in cancer patients, but the mechanism remains unclear. We therefore evaluated the effects and underlying mechanisms of fenbendazole in wild-type and 5-fluorouracil (5-FU)-resistant colorectal cancer (CRC) cells. Our data showed that fenbendazole significantly induced G2/M arrest and apoptosis via p53-p21 pathways in both CRC cells. Moreover, treatment with ferrostatin-1 and DFOM, inhibitors of the SLC7A11-dependent ferroptosis pathway, did not block fenbendazole-induced apoptosis. Therefore, it is presumed that fenbendazole triggers apoptosis in 5-FU-resistant CRC cells via p53-p21 pathways and partly via ferroptosis and necrosis. fenbendazole cures cancer