Ivermectin and Cancer

Cancer cell dividing, SEM - Stock Image - M132/0909 - Science Photo Library

 The following are studies and links to articles about Ivermectin and Cancer.  More studies are available at google scholar. Search for "cancer" and "ivermectin."

Juarez, M., Schcolnik-Cabrera, A., & Dueñas-Gonzalez, A. (2018). The multitargeted drug ivermectin: from an antiparasitic agent to a repositioned cancer drug. American journal of cancer research, 8(2), 317–331.

Ivermectin belongs to the group of avermectins (AVM), a series of 16-membered macrocyclic lactone compounds discovered in 1967, and FDA-approved for human use in 1987. It has been used by millions of people around the world exhibiting a wide margin of clinical safety. This review summarizes the in vitro and in vivo evidences demonstrating that ivermectin exerts antitumor effects in different types of cancer.

 Liu, J., Zhang, K., Cheng, L., Zhu, H., & Xu, T. (2020). Progress in Understanding the Molecular Mechanisms Underlying the Antitumour Effects of Ivermectin. Drug design, development and therapy, 14, 285–296. https://doi.org/10.2147/DDDT.S237393

This review summarizes the published studies to define the current progress in the characterization of ivermectin and cancer. Ivermectin causes cell death in cancer cell lines. Ivermectin can affect the growth and proliferation of cancer cells and plays several different roles, such as its functions as an RNA helicase, a small-molecule mimetic of the surface-induced dissociation (SID) peptide, an activator of chloride channel receptors, and an inducer of mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress. In addition, ivermectin induces the multidrug resistance protein (MDR), has potent anti-mitotic activity, targets angiogenesis and inhibits cancer stem-like cells (CSCs). Many studies have proven that ivermectin exerts antitumour effects and might thus benefit patients with cancer after sufficient clinical trials. 

Markowska, A., Kaysiewicz, J., Markowska, J., & Huczyński, A. (2019). Doxycycline, salinomycin, monensin and ivermectin repositioned as cancer drugs. In Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Letters (Vol. 29, Issue 13, pp. 1549–1554). Elsevier Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bmcl.2019.04.045

Chemotherapy is one of the standard methods for the treatment of malignant tumors. It aims to cause lethal damage to cellular structures, mainly DNA. Noteworthy, in recent years discoveries of novel anticancer agents from well-known antibiotics have opened up new treatment pathways for several cancer diseases. The aim of this review article is to describe new applications for the following antibiotics: doxycycline (DOX), salinomycin (SAL), monensin (MON) and ivermectin (IVR) as they are known to show anti-tumor activity, but have not yet been introduced into standard oncological therapy. To date, these agents have been used for the treatment of a broad-spectrum of bacterial and parasitic infectious diseases and are widely available, which is why they were selected. The data presented here clearly show that the antibiotics mentioned above should be recognised in the near future as novel agents able to eradicate cancer cells and cancer stem cells (CSCs) across several cancer types.