Richard Simcock, Chief Medical Officer at Macmillan Cancer Support, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Since *that* podcast aired my expert colleagues on the Macmillan Cancer Support helpline have received multiple calls about the anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin.
There have always been claims about complementary and alternative medicines; from shark cartilage to apricot kernels. It is neither unreasonable nor surprising that people affected by cancer would look wherever they can for help.
Ivermectin is somewhat different to previous trends in that unlike herbs or diets that purport to be more ‘natural’ ways to treat cancer Ivermectin is a synthetic drug. It feels to me like an important shift in behaviour for some people affected by cancer to reject evidence based drugs for the treatment of cancer in favour of non-evidence based drugs for the treatment of parasites.
Ivermectin does have some interesting properties in the lab which do make it intriguing as a cancer treatment although the list of compounds that have shown promise in vitro only to prove useless in humans is enormous. The translation of success in a test tube to failure in the real disease is too often widely misunderstood in our media and by our patients and sadly exploited by scientists in the hope of a favourable press-release. Nonetheless ‘repurposing’ (teaching old drugs new tricks) is not new and should not be ignored.
In breast cancer we have adopted bisphosphonates to reduce recurrence risk and the ADD-ASPIRIN trial has been a major UK effort to test a (very) cheap drug as an anti-cancer agent. It is well conducted trials that lead to acceptance. However there is a problem there: trials require time and money, and there is little of either when it comes to repurposed drugs. The ADD-ASPIRIN trial required a research grant of £3.8 million to run the study.
The appetite (and purse) for public funders to run studies on old drugs is small, yet it is not difficult to understand the frustration of a public who only see trials led and funded by large pharmaceutical companies. As for Ivermectin we have one single clinical trial so far presented in 9 patients with metastatic breast cancer with no evidence of effect. For a drug with a long list of known side effects and no demonstrated benefits we definitely should not or could not recommend it.
This mix of hope, misunderstanding, and perhaps suspicion of the motivations of researchers and pharma, creates a ripe environment for misinformation and distrust.
I would always ask people considering these options to discuss them with their medical teams, Macmillan professionals on the team or to talk to us direct at the Macmillan Support lines.”
You Can Also Read About Antiparasitic Drug Ivermectin and Immunotherapy for Cancer Treatment, Evidence and Ongoing Clinical Trials.