Repurposed drugs for cancers

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Repurposed drugs for cancers
YouTube video by Dr. John Campbell (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBnT8es28WY). Transcript is the auto-caption track — verbatim ASR, not a certified transcript.

but we do want to go on and talk about novel approaches to treatment uh to treating cancers and particularly I want to talk about repurpose drugs drugs with a known safety profile very often very safe um drugs that have been used for decades drugs that have been used on without exaggeration in the case of IC in billions of people um drugs which are very cheap drugs which can be manufactured literally by the ton relatively cheaply because they're often fairly simple molecules and drugs which way may well be highly efficacious against the disease they originally designed for or developed for or isolated for but then um out of Lucky accidents really a serendipitously uh aable to treating other conditions and we have we have a lot of precedent for this so EXA aspirin for example from willow bark was initially used for treating fevers now we realize it reduces platelet viscosity and help can prevent blood clotting and uh various other anti-inflammatory things so this is not unique this has happened quite a few times um I mean there was a drug introduced for uh for treating uh myocardial lemia for angina and it was later used for treating impotence as a surprise as a surprise find so this isn't this isn't unusual but what first arose your interest in oncology I I've started getting into repurpose drugs in when I started my substock in early 20123 and and I I really wanted to do a a deep dive into early treatments for covid-19 yeah uh treatments such as Ivermectin hydroxychloroquine and and I wanted to know for myself you know you know were these were these effective in covid-19 were they not what was the science what was what was the research telling us and and and of course you know when whenever you want to do a deep dive into a topic like that you have to read the papers and so I went and I read paper after paper and I and I read dozens and dozens of paper and I was particularly fascinated by Ivor mechon why why this antiparasitic drug was the focus of so much attention in the United States to the point where the FDA is tell people not to take it uh and yet we have you know as as you mentioned we we have Decades of of prescriptions given of iveron I think four billion doses uh at this point yeah you know excellent safety record around the world yeah uh unquestionable safety record established around the world and yet why why was this a FOC focus of such you know controversy and attention and and as I dove into that research into a and hydroxy chloroquin and so on I discovered a large body of literature uh specifically with icin and cancer and icin in the use of cancer and I found that very odd and very unusual and I and I of course you know I was naturally curious well why why would itin work in cancer how does it work in cancer and so um you know I I did a a PubMed search and and I think something like over 300 peer-reviewed papers come out and and and you know um in regards to itin and cancer now it's all preclinical research and then you start looking at well where are the human trials you know I want to see the human trials as well but you see preclinical research where they you know where they where they're studying the the the cancer cell lines or they're studying it in in mice or rats um but this preclinical body of research on Ivor MN and cancer is so impressive it's not one or two papers you know some a group of research archers tinkering in the lab you know these are dozens and dozens of paper you know extensive research done uh looking at the various mechanisms of how ican might act in cancer uh and what cancers icin impact and it really seems to be a broad anti-cancer agent uh that that can be used in in in in a variety of cancers anything from blood cancers to to solid tumors as well and um it's it's just a such a fascinating uh it's just such a fascinating molecule because when you look at the mechanisms of action now this is an antiparasitic a very successful antiparasitic and yet it has different mechanisms of action in cancer it targets cancer stem cells for example something that I find really fascinating where it's it's able to uh attack these cancer stem cells that don't necessarily proliferate rapidly but you know these are cells that could cause problems in the future that could cause metastasis in the future that could cause cancer recurrence in the future and I and I believe that when you have standard chemotherapy standard chemotherapy will kill the rapidly dividing cells um just based on the nature of of of the rapid proliferation but they will not kill slowly dividing cells often uh and they the chemotherapy may not kill cancer stem cells and so you often hear chemo being referred to as pallative instead of Curative the intent is paliative to you know the they will tell you you cannot cure stage four pancreatic cancer for example you cannot cure stage four ovarian cancer we can buy you time with chemotherapy which will kill most of the cancer and and shrink a lot of the tumors and so on but it will not kill the cancer stem cells and it will not kill cancer cells that are resistant to that chemo because cancer cells can develop a resistance to certain chemotherapy they might have you know these pumps that just pump the chemotherapy right out of the cell and so in in some cases like ovarian cancer specifically these tumors can develop a resistance to chemotherapy that's why the oncologist has to change the chemo and go to the next agent and so on well itin can kill cancer stem cells that chemo can't itin can also reverse what's called multi-drug resistance in cancer cells and so it can actually sensitize cancer cells to chemotherapy it's also a radio sensitizer it can it can sensitize cancer cells to radiation therapy for example as well now it has other actions it can inhibit the tumor's ability to form new blood vessels so it can inhibit angiogenesis icin also inhibits certain enzymes called The Matrix metaloproteinases which are enzymes that detach cancer cells from the tumor and allow it to metastasize and spread to other parts of the body through the bloodstream and so icon will actually inhibit those enzymes um so that it inhibits metastasis of the tumor for example so when you look at it there's a dozen different mechanisms by which icting act acts on the molecular level on Cancers and so then you ask the question why where are the human trials because that's what it ultimately comes down to yes preclinical research is nice we have hundreds of papers on itin and cancer where are the human trials and there aren't any uh there are case reports there's a case series on three patients with leukemia uh I believe two of them were able to achieve some form of remission uh with iveron um and that's it and we don't have any randomized control trials we don't have any large studies in humans and then you find out well ion's been off patent since the 1990s I believe MC held the patent uh the patent expired in '96 I believe and so it's a cheap drug that's off patent and then you realize okay well there's no money to be made in in studying Ivermectin in humans for cancer and where there's no money to be made in oncology tragically there the research just doesn't follow yeah and so and so you see this this focus and this this happens to a lot of repurposed drugs and so for example you look at something like another antiparasitic fenbendazole or mebendazol now this is a different family of antiparasitics than Ivermectin Fen bendol was actually interestingly discovered by a terminal cancer patient uh from Oklahoma uh Joe tippens and Joe tippens had stage four small cell lung cancer which is one of the most aggressive cancers uh known and he had stage four small so lung cancer diagnosis terminal diagnosis and I I believe he was he was put on a trial of Kuda at the time and uh is that is that a regular cancer drug it is a regular cancer drug yes um and and sort of of what they call an immune checkpoint inhibitor yeah and and um so he was put on Kuda and and he tells the story later on that everybody on that trial died he was the only one who survived um and he tells the story of of of how he had a friend who was a veterinarian who said look we there's this parasitic drug this dog dewormer called Fen bendol uh it's been accidentally found to have anti-cancer properties in mice it's cheap it's it's it's safe to take why don't you why don't you try it and The Story Goes that you know he went he tried this this dog dewormer dog medicine I guess you could say and he cured his stage four small cell lung cancer which is completely unheard of I think his his he was given a survival of less than 1% you know sort of a 5year survival of less than 1% and he's still here to this day 7 years later he's cancer free with a stage four small cell cancer diagnosis and so he at the time he would actually go on news news uh shows and talk about his experience of trying Fen bendol which was not FDA approved for use in humans uh and how it cured his his uh or or he believed that it cured his stage four cancer um and and then you know I look into that research that body of research see again there's a ton of pre-clinical research on Fen bendol and there's now been cases published by Stanford University Medical Center of three patients who cure their stage 4 cancer with Fen bendol and the Stanford group looked into it analyzed it you know monitored these patients these patients had all failed three or four lines of chemotherapy they were terminal they took fenbendazole and they are now cancer-free and the Stanford group published this now the Stanford group itself they were not allowed the researchers were not allowed to recommend that drug Fen benzol because it's not FDA approved but they were at least this is now this is what I love about science is that they saw something fascinating they saw something that they thought other doctors and scientists should know about and they published it and uh they published this case series you had actually talked about this the you had you had talked about this paper from 2021 this this series of of three people who' cured their cancer with fenol and so there is an FDA approved version of fen bendol called mebendazol uh there is it's structurally almost identical there's one atom difference between fendol and mebendazol mebendazol has been approved by the FDA as an antiparasitic drug for use in children and adults and so it it has an an incredible safety profile very safe to use and mebendazol actually has a dozen uh clinical trials uh in which it's being looked at as a as a cancer agent as a repurpose drug for cancer and so I think because of its status as an FDA approved the drug there was much more willingness in the oncology Community to do trials with it and so there are trials in adults looking at colon cancer and various prostate cancer and there's also trials in children looking at brain cancers with mebendazol um and and and again this is an antiparasitic drug that has a dozen mechanisms of action one of the fascinating mechanisms of action in cancer is that it blocks glucose Transporters on cancer cells and so it it sort of starves the cancer cell from being able to use glucose as a fuel source specifically in cancer cells and not on normal cells yeah exactly glucose transporting in cancer cell that's amazing so there must be something biochemically different about the glucose transporter in cancer cells compared to ordinary cells that it's able to specifically Target exactly and what's fascinating about these repurpose drugs is they are very specific to cancer cells they are somehow identify a a cancer cell from from a normal cell and and and this been studied in icin as well is is icin is actually able to identify lymphoma cells and act on them and it's able to also identify normal cells and it doesn't have that same effect on the normal cells um it's what we call a Magic Bullet it it is it is absolutely fascinating I encourage anyone look you know look into the the preclinical research it is it is absolutely fascinating and and the the the the the mechanisms that we're talking about here that you're talking about are based on known biochemical Pathways this this is not something new this is this is understood biochemistry and this interfere these these drugs interfere in a particular biochemical mechanism in in a known biochemical way this is not speculation I mean biochemistry is a biochemistry is basically a hard science I mean medicine's a bit soft around the edges but but but biochemistry is a hard science it's it's bench chemistry and uh AB you can't really argue with that and the fact that it's got multiple mechanisms of action on multiple biochemical Pathways and that's true for I mectin and the mebendazol F bendol group that's right it's just it's just absolutely incredible that these natural molecules seem to have these multiple modalities of action and yet uh and yet we're staring the gift horse in the mouth exactly and the research is very very solid uh the research on the mechanisms the preclinical research is very solid this is not one or two papers this has been you know replicated this is hundreds hundreds of papers for these antiparasitic drugs so so this is not you know this is not a conspiracy theory this is not this is not Fringe medicine you know hard science as hard as it gets abely this is hard science um and and I and I love you know I I'm I'm always fascinated by by by preclinical research because that is what we that is what we stand on that is what the rest of medicine stands on is is the preclinical research that's what we rely on as as Physicians and that's what gives us the plausible mechanisms of action because if you can't give a plausible mechanism of action well you're not fulfilling an essential Bradford Hill criteria apart from anything else but you know if you can say well this is the way it's working then that that's what takes you into science away from mumbo jumbo because we've got we've got existing science and this this pharmacodynamic effect the way this drug is working is dovetailing with what we already know with multiple points of consistency with what is already known exactly and and so I found myself in a situation where I was writing articles on on on substack I was writing articles about turbo cancer potential mechanisms uh you know we talk about this brand new pathopysiology of turboc cancers and so uh I have I have a paper uh that I co- authored uh on the igg4 shift uh that could be one of the potential causes of turboc cancer um where we see uh someone who's had let's say multiple vaccines they they end up with an an immune uh immune system shift where they start producing different types of antibodies and instead of producing igg1 and three they start producing igg4 which is an antibody that creates tolerance to something like the spike protein but uh it also starts to tolerate cancer uh and and so i' I've I've been you know I've been involved in some of this research uh in trying to figure out the mechanisms but now I'm shifting towards I'm shifting towards treatment and I'm shifting towards looking at well can we help patients with turbo cancer how can we help them um and certainly you know I I encourage everyone to pursue all the options in mainstream oncology you know pursue all the options whether it's chemotherapy radiation therapy therapy you know you have to pursue all those options you have to have those discussions with your oncologist but what else can you do uh what if you're out of options what what other options are there and I think this area of repurpose drugs you know is something that that we can try as clinicians uh something that we can uh look into uh advise patients on and a lot of patients themselves are you know they look at look at some of these purpose drugs and and they start taking them they they start you know they start taking them themselves so as I was writing about uh as I was writing about icin and fendol and mebendazol in cancer I had patients who actually started taking them and then they would come back to me 6 months later and say Dr Maus you know I read your articles and I I took these on my own um you know there was no patient you Doctor relationship or anything like that they took them on their own and they come back to me and they say my my cancers are shrinking um my oncologist is shocked my oncologist told me I shouldn't be alive anymore and yet I'm here my cancer is stable uh and so I keep I kept getting story after Story you know in one or two stories you say that's fantastic I'm you know I'm really happy for you that you know that's really terrific uh but when you get a dozen or two dozen stories like that and that's what happened to me is I started having so many patients coming back to me that I thought you know there there there's something here where I could actually be helping patients with I could be helping them with Ivermectin I could tell them about the side effects potential side effects I could guide them in dosing for example how do you dose these things right how do you find the appropriate dose for the appropriate condition and so this is what I've been working on for the last two years I did start a Cancer Clinic or or sort of a cancer coaching or health coaching program with repurposed drugs where um you know I I have clients cancer clients that come to me we discuss the research we look at the research um and we talk about repurpose drugs and what repurpose drugs they might use and want to try themselves and and and so this is where I've been trying to go from just identifying the problem saying look we've got this explosion of cancers these turbo cancers aggressive cancers to actually helping patients and give them some options that they can use and I've had some fascinating results uh patients I've had uh you know a number of stage for pancreatic cancer patients who've been now declared cancer free cango carcinoma patients ovarian cancer patients whose tumors are shrinking uh even though they failed multiple lines of chemotherapy and so these are Cancers that were absolute death sentences exactly exactly and and and another feature I wanted to just mention um is that these repurpose drugs when you look at the preclinical research they have Synergy with chemotherapy they have Synergy with immunotherapy uh and even radiation therapy in some cases and when I was I was amazed at the radiotherapy one that you can actually sensitize a drug to uh sensitize a cell to radioinduced cell death is just incredible it's just brilliant it's it's fascinating you know because because when you look at some of these mechanisms some of them are known and some of them are still unknown and and you you see all these all these all these all these biochemical pathways that htin acts on and all these Pathways where you know it it it changes the expression of certain proteins and then suddenly you you stimulate apoptosis of of the cancer cell the the cell just goes pop and dies exactly the the programmed cell death and and so a lot of these Pathways that icin fendol mebendazol act on are proapoptotic Pathways uh where you are you're bringing that cancer cell towards this programmed cell death and you're also you know this idea of of of being able to remove drug resistance a a cancer cell that has developed drug resistance to me is absolutely fascinating yeah how how can you possibly reverse that that's just it's just I mean it's wonderful but it's uh it's biochemistry well beyond my level of understanding that's for sure really is it's pure biochemistry and sometimes even I have a hard time understanding some of these Pathways you know but I certainly do but it really you know the fact that it can affect expression of certain proteins and so on it's just it just it's incredible and and so it I think repurpose drugs I think there's there's a big future in repurposed drugs uh and and I think repurposed drugs can give patients hope in situations that are very dire and and and in the past would be considered hopeless um and we're dealing with drugs very safe very limited side effect profile can nearly always be given with or all the regular what you might call Standard Cancer Treatments exactly and and for people who've exhausted the standard Cancer Treatments stage four pancreatic cancer for example um why not why not try something that's not going to do you any harm you know if you want to change the brand of whiskey that you drink in the last days of your life then then fine fine try it you know and but but something like this that is potentially uh can potentially improve the condition is is is is is just incredible and I am optimistic again in the states that that the right to try is going to be reintroduced uh that people who are terminal can basically try whatever they want and I agree with that um one of the things I always used to teach my students was in in acute care some P sometimes patients are going to die and you you always have to be in a position where you can walk into the relatives you can tell them about this tragic death and you can say we tried absolutely everything at our disposal now that's not always true tragically but we should always work to that situation we tried absolutely everything we've got in 2025 nothing else we could have done and so many people are dying now and that is not that cannot be said you're absolutely right I'm trying not to get cross now um it's just not acceptable you're absolutely right in in that um the state of oncology in in let's say in North America for example because I'm very familiar with state of oncology in North America but I do have patients in the UK in Ireland in Australia I have a global I have a global clientele and so I do get insight into how oncology is practiced uh elsewhere but the state of oncology in North America is that oncologists have these rigid guidelines and protocols that they follow and same in the UK yeah and you have you know your first line chemo second line chemo maybe you you can throw in some immunotherapy in there of course radiation were appropriate and so on but but they go step by step through these rigid guidelines and they come to the end and they tell the patient sorry there's nothing else we can do for you but but that's not true that's not true there there's a whole body there's a whole area of of let's say um repurpose drugs that you don't even know about that you you don't even tell your patient about and and we run into the situation I have patients from Mayo Clinic I have patients from John's Hopkins memorial stone kering MD Anderson you know Dana Farber these leading centers leading cancer centers in the United States and the patients come to me and they say you know my doctor is saying you know I'm out of options or I'm running out of options or or they have nothing else to offer me and it's not true there is something that they can offer but I I always have this discussion with with patients that you know your your oncologist probably is not allowed to offer you anything else or to suggest anything else because there may be retaliation there may you know their their licenses may be targeted their jobs may be targeted and they the oncologists it's true the oncologists don't have the freedom to go off script as I would say or go outside of the guidelines true but there's still big ethical questions there AB if I know if I know something that might save someone's life and I don't tell them that's got big ethical questions but I want to I want to enter a completely academic discussion now and look at um doses of these drugs if we start off with with uh let's start off with icin what sort of doses might we be thinking about for what's maybe just give some examples of conditions that you've where you've got personal experience the starting dose uh that I look at with icin is 1 mgram per kilogram per day quite high and it is a little bit High uh I always say this is about five about five times the those that you would use for covid-19 or or a parasite infection for example is is is this with what level of cancer is this with sorry this would be with with with most cancers sort of intermediate to highgrade cancers now for low grade cancers you could certainly start lower at at half a half a milligram per kilogram per day and so for a 60 kg person uh typical starting dose would be about 60 Mig of icin but for low grade C something like CLL chronic lymphatic leukemia that's been you know simmering for many years or maybe maybe multiple Myoma I start lower at at half a milligram per kilogram so that'll be something like 30 milligrams of icin a day uh and that's more in the range of a dose for a viral infection or a parasitic infection and is that six days a week that's 7 days a week 7 days a week for how many weeks uh well so I suggest um patients try icin of for cancer for 3 months and I'll tell you the reasoning behind that uh and then with a reassessment of some kind looking at blood work uh cancer markers for example or looking at follow-up Imaging um the reason why I say 3 months is because from my experience I have seen uh a response to icin on cancer markers as early as 3 4 weeks so this is uh markers like prostate specific antigen PSA we could see a drop in the PSA we could see a drop in CA or ca125 or these other more specialized uh markers for breast cancer for example these are basically chemicals given off by the cancer cells exactly and you can you can see those start to drop now they are they're not perfect tests but they are surrogates for cancer activ level of cancer activity or the level of T tumor burden uh how much cancer how much active cancer is there that where these cancer cells are producing these markers you could see those markers start to drop and you can actually start to see uh the activity of the tumors start to drop on a on a pet scan a positron emission tomography scan uh in about a month but it takes a little bit longer to start seeing tumors physically shrink uh lymph nodes shrink you know primary tumor shrink that takes about 2 to 3 months to to see that to start seeing that on Imaging like MRI petct or CT so you want to give it a good 3 months to see if if you've got if you have a response you could you could you could monitor it on the blood markers um within a month or so you could start seeing if there is a response and then after 2 3 months you could actually start seeing uh responses on Imaging and I'll tell you the most dramatic results that I've seen and I get attacked from both sides I get attacked from conventional oncology on this and I get attacked from the sort of Health Freedom Movement on this but the best results I've seen in my patients are patients who are doing a combination of chemotherapy and ican um and then combine it with either fendol or mebendazol as well and but when you do the combination treatment there's a certain Synergy uh and and that Synergy is documented in pre-clinical research uh where you get a lot more cancer cell killing with the combination than with any of those agents by cells well it's consistent with what you were saying before about the sensitization of the malignant cells exactly it do it does make sense and this precedent for this again things like lowd dose nxone can can sensitize people to exactly conventional um chemotherapeutic agents so those sort of doses of icin we're talking about I mectin on its own or with traditional Cancer Treatments is that that's right yeah so so that's kind of almost like a monotherapy isn't it with with icin well in the sense the fact monotherapy in terms of of of the the pre purpose therapy you can be giving it with a range of other traditional oncologist prescrib drugs yeah and and and so you know when you are giving it with with uh with chemotherapy it's sort of an adjunct in the sense that that you're sort of adding it into you're adding it into your chemo y regimen and and patients will take the Ain throughout the chemotherapy regimen I will tell you another fascinating story of a physician assistant I have in the United States who had already done four cycles of of of chemotherapy and started taking uh itin and um you know I had suggested some dosing for him and so on and the first thing he told me was with my fifth cycle I had no chemo symptoms and he was playing golf the next day and and he said usually the chemo will knock me out for 3 days I can't do anything for 3 days and you know I started taking itin and then I all my chemo chemo symptoms were gone and he was playing golf the next day and he couldn't believe it and the same thing happened the next cycle and then the next cycle after that you know and then his markers were were dropping as well and and he was having a fantastic response so if he only took it to to reduce the side effects that would have been worthwhile exactly and so the icin in many cases actually uh is able to reduce the side effects of the chemotherapy and I think uh part of that may be because ivorine does seem to have a very powerful anti-inflammatory component as well and so I have I have other patients who don't who don't have cancer who I've I've I've guided um with ivermectin for example patients with rheumatoid arthritis whose symptoms improve dramatically patients with fibromyalgia patients with Lyme disease for example uh I've seen dramatic improvements in these situations where patients been suffering uh with with this with a chronic inflammatory condition for many many years and they they get you know rapid relief with Ivermectin within a few weeks of taking Ivermectin and this would be again a lower dose about a half a milligram per kilogram for you know these inflammatory conditions so I've seen traumatic response for inflammation but like you said even if it was just for you know improving the the patient quality of life during chemotherapy it would be worthwhile because the side effect profile of iin is so favorable quite incredible this the anti I wasn't aware of that such a strong anti-inflammatory effect I must say um now the the the the side effects with these sort of higher doses um are you seeing side effects what side effects do you see I'm seeing some transient side effects when if you've never taken icton before and you you start at 1 milligram per kilogram per day for 60 kgr person that's 60 Mig of icin you may have some transient visual symptoms the the visual symptoms have been described as uh uh seeing colors a little bit more vividly or seeing a little bit of stars uh it's almost as if when you get up too quickly and you have that that effect that you might you might faint uh so there's been visual symptoms described now these are temporary uh they may last anywhere from from a few minutes to a few hours and they do go away with time you know after one or two weeks of icin use the body seems to get used to it and they go away even maintaining the same dose of icin exactly right and and so there's there's reports I mean there's reports in the literature um of of icin being used at 1 milligram per kilogram for up to a year with with no side effects and there's been no long-term effects uh reported with icin use either now if no no non-reversible neurological effects that you've ever come across no now you could push the dose higher to 2 milligram per kilog per day but you have to be cautious uh when you go to those higher doses now I've had I've had some successes going to the higher doses especially with very aggressive cancer pancreatic cancer for example I had a patient who who who cleared his pancreatic cancer with a few months of icin 2 milligrams per kilogram per day uh but there you can start to get uh especially in in more elderly patients you might get some confusion you might get some instability on the feet uh and so you have to be more careful going into the higher doses uh again ivin has a half life of 18 hours so if if you do run into some side effects you stop it's out of your system within two days um and again no no long-term effects but you have to be a little bit more careful with icin if you want to push the the higher doses I did hear I think it was on Joe Rogan um there was a doctor on on there um forgot his name now anyway um he said that someone got benefit with just from prostate cancer with just 12 milligrams of icin a day for several weeks is that biochemically feasible or do you think that dose is too small to no it is and and I I have seen I have seen some really uh impressive responses um to a lowd do iycon as well so there is a wide range of dosing and it really does seem to vary from person to person and it it really varies from from I I I Almost Say say cancer cell type to cancer cell type cuz I could have two prostate cancer patients and one will respond to 12 milligrams of ivermectin and the other one may not respond to 60 milligrams of ivermectin and and so there's a wide range of dosing that that's where this becomes a little bit tricky and I think where patients need some guidance uh in terms of dosing and response because the cancer cell killing is dose dependent it is these are things we need to learn of course this is not established pharmacology is it AB I think this is where we need we need those human trials we need researchers to be supported in this kind of work uh and and regardless of the fact that there's no money to be made at the end of this right that there's no money to be made for some pharmaceutical company or shareholders of a pharmaceutical company this is for patient benefit and this is where you know where where a physician or a scientist is doing something for a patient's benefit rather than for financial interests or corporate interests and we need support of this kind of research I think repurpose drugs there's so much research that that so much good research that needs to be done and so with this dosing of icin you know there is a there's there's a wide range uh of Effectiveness and I have seen Effectiveness as low as 12 milligrams I can tell you if you're combining it with chemotherapy you can get away with lower doses of ican inter uh and you will see a dramatic response and the way most of my patients are not telling their oncologists that they're taking icin and I always you know I'm of the opinion you want to be honest with your doctor you should be honest with your doctor but if your doctor doesn't have your best interests at heart uh then you run into this complicated situation so a lot of patients are not telling their doctor and the situation means the data is not being collected really that's true if this is working you know the oncologists are going to be thinking they're a lot clever clever than they actually are exactly and so what happens is the oncologist then has a genuinely shocked reaction M when they see an outcome of their chemotherapy regimen that they're not used to seeing and and and and I've seen this even with radiation oncologists where tumors are shrinking after two or three radiation treatments and the radiation oncologist is is shocked they're like wow you had an amazing response to just a couple of radiation treatments because they're not used to seeing that kind of response they have no idea that there's Synergy going on with icin where the icin sensitized the tumor and that's why the radiation is shrinking the tumor's dramatically but the radiation oncologist doesn't know that and the and the patient is too scared to tell them because most of the time when my patients have told their oncologist that they're taking icin or fendol mebendazol the oncologist has a very bad reaction to the point and this happens in the UK this happens in Canada this happens in Australia to a lesser degree in the United States the oncologist will actually threaten the patient that if they do something like this that they'll drop them as a patient which to me is very unethical but this is that's that's bully boy we to me bullying it's bullying exactly and but this is this is what patients face and and you know I'll have patients tell me I made a mistake I shouldn't have told my oncologist you know I wanted to be honest I wanted to be open and now they've threatened me they said we'll kick you out of the trial you know we we'll we'll stop treating you this doesn't happen as much in the United States I find in the United States that culture it it's not as it's the bullying behavior is not there the oncologists are more open I've had oncologists say you know that's perfectly fine you can take Ivor mton with this regimen no problem but once you go go outside of the United States especially in countries like Canada UK Australia there's a lot more of this bullying Behavior and the the idea that a doctor should threaten their a doctor should threaten their patient is justable it's unethical it's unprofessional it shouldn't happen but unfortunately it does does uh and so patients have learned that it's better not to their oncologist and their oncologist doesn't even want to know so when they have a good response my patients will tell me my my oncologist didn't ask any questions didn't ask if I was eating different if I was doing anything different didn't want to know didn't care we have we have a name for this in England uh actually comes from Australia but it's called curiosity deficit disorder and uh it's quite a debilitating condition absolutely and especially in in in oncology it's to not have curiosity to not yeah this is what science and medicine's all about oh oh why is that happen what's going on there oh you know because imagine you know as as ANC I mean you know you could publish it as a you could publish it as an interesting case report you know or maybe even a case series uh why why not why not ask the questions um you know there there was a situation a couple of case reports have been published with with CBD oil canab a dial um where where patients there was a couple of 80-year-old patients they had they had lung cancer and they refused chemotherapy they said look I'm 80 years old I don't want chemotherapy and and the oncologist said okay well we're going we're going to continue monitoring you anyways and then suddenly the lung lung lung cancer is shrinking shrinking and it's gone a few months later and of course now that this these oncologists actually asked the question they're like okay what are you doing yeah we're not treating you why is why is your cancer gone and the patient tells them well I've just been taking CBD oil a few drops a day you know under the tongue uh for the last few months and they went and they published those case reports that is what oncologist should be doing they should be inquisitive they should be asking the question they should be willing to learn and there's this just absolute absence of willingness to learn yeah yeah so mendol and Fen bendol both end in a all so they're in the same group uh do they have similar doses they do um so it's a family of antiparasitics called benzimidazoles two of them are FDA approved and that's mebendazol and albendazol and so you will you will find albendazol is also uh available um and and some doctors are willing to even prescribe mebendazol and albendazol and then fenbendazole is is sort of the almost like the stepchild or or the you know it's it's not FDA approved and yet it's in the same family with very similar almost identical mechanism almost identical molecule yeah of action and so uh Incredible family um extensively researched and there are a number of I would say about a dozen clinical trials ongoing right now with mebendazol in cancer looking at pediatric cancers looking at adult cancers um and so it this is again this is not Fringe medicine this is not fringe science this is something that's being seriously looked at nothing published yet that I'm aware of though uh in terms of mebendazol you're right I I think there's there's some phase two phase two trials ongoing um so it's yeah you're right but um it is being looked at seriously at least meend that's encouraging and and and so that that is you know that is great now Fen Fen bendol gets attacked because it's a medicine commonly used you know it's a dog medicine it's a as they call it a dog dewormer and yet it it's got an excellent safety profile just like mebendazol I've I can tell you having advised over a thousand patients on the use of ivermectin fendol and mebendazol um there's there's this myth that uh the fendol mebendazol are difficult on the liver that they can damage the liver and so on uh they can raise the the the liver function tests liver enzymes and it's it's quite rare it's very rare um I just don't see it but if it did happen in you stop the drugs or reduce them the liver's got remarkable powers of regeneration hasn't it so well absolutely so if if you do get elevated liver function tests and I see it in less than maybe less than 3% of patients I see elevated liver function tests you stop it for a few weeks and those liver function tests if it was the fendol or mebendazol they go right back down to normal this has been published in peer-reviewed literature as well that there's this sort of transient you could almost call it an irritation of of the liver in a sense where you get this sort of transient uh spike in liver enzymes you stop it for a few weeks and it comes right back down and then you can start again exactly and so again excellent safety profile uh established and um really just uh I've seen some incredible incredible responses and I combine the iveron with either a fendol or mebendazol I do a combination there does seem to be a synergistic effect there doesn't there but can we look at the doses first of all so for treat I've been treat eting worms with mebendazol for probably about 40 years 100 milligram tablets um so so what sort of doses of mebendazol and Fen bendol might you be using for for uh various types of cancers a typical dose I suggest is a thousand milligrams a day uh split in two doses and that's the same whether it's mebendazol or offen bendol exactly so either a thousand ofen bendol and and you know the the Stamford uh case series that you had you had talked about um on another program uh they had done 1,000 Mig of fen bendol I believe it was 3 days on 4 days off uh and achieved remarkable success achieved remission from stage four cancer three days on four days off yes so that was what what what the group of patients were doing at Stanford I tend to use Six Days on one day off um a little bit a little bit more aggressive dosing and same thing with mebendazol th000 milligrams 6 day on one day off one day off is that just to give the liver a bit of a break exactly you you give the liver a bit of a break um and again incredible results now you could you could you could go less you could go either 500 of fendol and 500 of mebendazol if you're dealing with a low grade cancer uh maybe a very early stage situation I have a lot of patients coming to me with early stage prostate cancer maybe they don't want the surgery and radiation therapy and they are looking for a way that they can maybe shrink the tumor or get rid of it all together um without having an intervention and the risks of of those interventions so you could you could do lower doses like 500 milligram of for for how long again I I I design my protocols for three months and I and I always and I and I I've done this with iin and fendol and mebendazol and it's roughly the same idea is is you can start to see changes in in cancer markers in about a month takes about 2 to 3 months to start seeing shrinkage of lesions and typically oncology patients especially when you're dealing with active disease chemotherapy immunotherapy they will have follow-up Imaging every 3 months or so and so you will automatically have that Imaging from your oncologist uh if not I I encourage patients to make sure that they have Imaging followup uh from their oncologist and so you can see after 3 months or after 6 months if there's been a response uh to the lesions uh and so I had I had a situation recently with a breast cancer patient who had her surgery was delayed for whatever reason and and she had a several months of weight time to her surgery she had a 7 cm breast tumor by the time so she was taking itin and mebendazol by the time by the time her surgery came around and there were some enlarged lift nodes as well by the time her surgery came around the tumor was less than 3 cm and there were no positive lyph nodes where they were certain that there were going to be positive lift notes based on based on the Imaging appearance so she had shrunk her tumor by more than half and managed to eliminate uh some of those lyph nodes entirely by the time she had her surgery and this was a matter of maybe 3 months it's amazing so so in things like breast cancer and prostate cancer the the traditional treatments will involve hormonal modification yes so so for example testosterone blocking for prostate cancer um what sort of interactions if any are possible there with with say Fen bendol and testosterone blockers there's no documented interactions that I'm aware of um and you know what's interesting when you look at drug drug interactions with whether it's itin whether it's mebendazol there's not a lot of drugs that that they interact with in in a negative way and so for example for Ivermectin you have to be aware that itin does interact with warin um and so you have to be aware of that doesn't seem to interact with any of the other um anti-coagulant and then there's certain um antis psychotic medications I believe that also interact uh with icin so um you know there's a few drug interactions to be aware of wol is pretty uncommon these days we tend to use more the more modern generations of uh anticoagulants exactly so so it really hasn't come up as as an issue the drug interaction so there doesn't seem to be any interaction with any of the hormone therapies uh whether it's for breast cancer whether it's for prostate cancer um you know you are you are getting that you're getting that benefit of of the other mechanisms uh anti-cancer mechanisms from the icin or the mebendazol that you're not going to get that from chemo you're not going to get that from immunotherapy you're not going to get that from hormone therapy yeah um is is there a is mebendazol or fendol preferable for treating human cancers or they much of a muchness they are when when it comes to preclinical research they are very very similar especially at higher doses yeah mendal me Abol is preferred um now mebendazol has has better penetrator penetration through the blood brain barrier than Fen bendol so it would be the preferred agent for any kind of brain tumors central nervous system yeah exactly or or brain metastasis uh and there are certain cancers in which uh there is more preclinical research for mebendazol and this would be the squa cell carcinomas breast cancers sarcomas um I'm just trying to think it's interesting that you're getting really quite specific there particular drug for particular pathology so so knowledge is accumulating rapidly in this area that's right and and I do I do still lean heavily on on peer-reviewed uh research even if it is preclinical research you know if there is preclinical research I do want to lean on that and I can tell you I can give you one example actually for ovarian cancer for example uh ovarian cancer I prefer mebendazol over fendol and and why is that well there's researchers in South Korea who've discovered that uh when they um when they researched fenbendazole for aarian cancer there's excellent response um in in in vitro studies but it doesn't translate to invivo studies when they were looking at mice the effect didn't didn't translate to the same degree and so they've been experimenting combining putting Fen bendol into various kinds of nanop particles uh as as delivery mechanisms so they could deliver the F bendol to the tumor in a much more efficient way and there's been three studies that have come out looking at various delivery mechanisms various types of sort of nanop particles formulations with Fen bendol and solubility is fairly low isn't it that's probably why you need the higher doses exactly and so I'm aware of that research I'm aware that there's been struggle with Fen bendol You know getting that drug to the ovarian cancer cells or to ovarian tumors And yet when you look at the mebendazol research in ovarian cancer there is evidence that uh you know it is quite effective uh in halting PR proliferation and so on so I do lean on existing research uh to decide whether I'm going to use or suggest mebendazol versus fendol interesting how optimistic are you that as we know more we'll be able to give for example icton and Fen Benders all together enjoying the synergistic effect and being able to lower the dose you know I I think in a way I would say the cat is out of the bag in in the sense that uh this information is getting out yeah and and it's getting out on platforms like X it's getting out on platform you know it's getting out on sub through substacks uh there's other authors you know writing about using itin F bendol or combinations thereof and so so once information gets out and you no longer have this um suppression because I I would say the oncologists in a way are suppressed in that oncologists who did pursue uh non-conventional treatments historically have been targeted their licenses have been targeted they they've they' they their reputations have been targeted they often had to flee the country you know we have a doctor in Canada who was using repurpose drugs Dr Khan who had to flee Canada after years of battling with the College of Physicians and surgeons and now he's in Florida and he's got a clinic in Florida he he had to leave the country and and other doctors look at that and say well why would I risk my career and the well-being of my family to pursue repurposed drugs I'm just going to stick with the guidelines that I get from the American Cancer Society or Canadian Cancer Society and I'll be fine right and so so the culture the culture has been very um uh unfavorable towards repurpose drugs or unconventional treatments and but that's changing and I think it's just the sheer amount of information that is getting out right now um I think um I I think it's going to change medicine and and and I do believe that that with the new Administration in the United States with with you know RFK Jr uh being confirmed and and bringing in People based on again based on Merit and and and bringing Freedom back to science and medicine I think I think we have we're going to have a whole new era in medicine where you know I think we will have Research into repurpose drugs and I think it will become part of the mainstream I think it will be become a part of mainstream medicine and mainstream Cancer Treatments just to pict you that a lot of people are going to die in pain before we get to that point which is uh is quite tragic how important do you think it is to be vitamin D replete when you're getting these repurpose drug treatments vitamin is is is very crucial um and I I have found that U it was crucial for covid-19 uh I think there was a lot of evidence that most of the patients who did very poorly uh with covid-19 infection who had severe infections ended up in the ICU or died were vitamin D deficient uh and and I think that's been borne out by many studies and you know it seems to be the case in cancer as well uh vitamin D seems to be protective uh for cancer so being having high enough levels of vitamin D seems to be protective for you developing certain types of cancers uh but I think also as as a cancer patient um it's important for you to have high levels of of vitamin D and and so I always ask my patients well have you had your vitamin D levels checked and they always say no and and they they always say my oncologist hasn't even brought it up uh my oncologist hasn't tested me for vitamin D that I find that bemusing I just can't explain why wouldn't you test for an important immuno modulator given and it's such an easy test it's it's not that it's a highly specialized test or an expensive test it's a simple test U and I think it's it's crucial and so I suggest you know high doses of Vitamin D uh supplementation at least 10,000 uh units a day if someone's low for sure yeah exactly and and and and and to have their levels checked and I said look if your oncologist is not willing to do it get your family doctor uh to check your vitamin D levels but very very important for the immune system well it it wouldn't work in the UK because GPS have been told not to test for vitamin D unless someone's got rickets wow which again is quite inexplicable um yeah but but things like zinc vitamin C you know good nutritions clearly vitally in addition to to to to