Ivermectin Could Be a ‘Powerful Drug’ for Fighting Cancer, Here’s Why

This article originally appeared on The Epoch Times and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Marina Zhang

Rick Alderson was a retired sawmill worker who was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer in November 2020.

He experienced excruciating pain in his bowels for months; then, a gastroenterologist found a large tumor in his rectum and told him and his wife he only had six months to live.

To the oncologist, Mr. Alderson “was a dead man walking,” Mr. Alderson’s wife, Eve Alderson, told The Epoch Times.

Doctors were against starting him on treatment due to Mr. Alderson’s age and the severity of his cancer, but Mr. and Mrs. Alderson determined that their fate was in God’s hands and decided to do whatever they could.

Mr. Alderson got started with 10 rounds of radiation therapy. Initially, his carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), a marker for tumor activity, was significantly elevated at 480 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL). A month later, he started chemotherapy. By then, his CEA levels had risen to 1,498 ng/mL.

By the time Mr. Alderson started treatment, his colon cancer had metastasized and spread to his liver, where he had 25 tumors.

“I was off their charts,” Mr. Alderson said in an interview with The Cancer Box, a cancer diagnosis blog.

Due to concerns about COVID-19 and the ongoing pandemic, Mr. Alderson started looking into preventative medication and found ivermectin.

Further research showed that the drug could likely enhance the effectiveness of his chemotherapy and radiation therapy and was relatively safe. In February 2021, he began taking ivermectin.

Ten days later, his CEA levels had dropped to 184 ng/mL.

Come March, the number was 47.9 ng/mL. By April 7, it was 20.7; by April 21, it had dropped to 13.9 ng/mL. By midsummer, it had fallen into the normal range. Of the 25 tumors in his liver, only three remained.

Mr. Alderson went on to live another two years before succumbing to liver failure due to the progression of his three remaining liver tumors.

“His life was definitely extended,” Mrs. Alderson said, reflecting on Mr. Alderson’s cancer journey.

She attributes Mr. Alderson’s survival beyond his prognosis to his success with ivermectin and the chemotherapy drug fluorouracil. “Ivermectin was instrumental,” she said.

Multiple Anti-Cancer Effects

“There are at least nine perfectly defined cancer targets affected by ivermectin,” Dr. Alfonso Dueñas-González, an oncologist and senior researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told The Epoch Times.

The first reports of ivermectin’s anti-cancer properties came in 1995. Two French researchers found that ivermectin—a Nobel Prize-winning anti-parasite drug—could reverse multidrug resistance in tumors. The drug targets tumor stem cells—a driver of cancer tumors and relapses—and promotes cancer death.

Ivermectin also enhances the effects of chemo and radiation therapy. It has a broad impact on the immune system, increasing immune offense against cancers.

It also inhibits cancer cell cycles, helping prevent the formation of new cancer cells. The drug promotes the killing of cancer cells by inducing mitochondrial stress and prevents cancer survival by preventing new blood vessels, which transport energy and fuel to cancers, from forming near cancer cells.

While many studies have found that ivermectin has impressive potential as an anti-cancer drug, there are few clinical studies of ivermectin use for cancer. One study followed three children with acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive cancer that progresses quickly if not treated. After conventional chemo failed, all three children were put on a combination therapy with ivermectin. While all patients eventually succumbed to the disease, two children saw temporary improvement in their symptoms, which was noteworthy given the cancer’s rapid progression. The third patient had no response to ivermectin.

Another Japanese study followed three patients with different cancers—breast, bone, and lung—who were on a combination of ivermectin and other drugs, including an anti-cancer hormonal therapy.

For two patients, ivermectin was added last in the therapeutic combination, with doctors observing significant improvements in symptoms. Soon after ivermectin was added, “all the symptoms were relieved,” the authors noted about one patient.

The other patient was prescribed ivermectin alongside other drugs. After one treatment cycle, he could come to the clinic “on foot by himself.”

An Immune Booster

Dr. Peter P. Lee, chair of immuno-oncology at the City of Hope, is a leading researcher in the United States on ivermectin as an immunotherapeutic drug for cancer.

Conventional anti-cancer therapeutics such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy focus on damaging the DNA of cancer cells and killing them. At the same time, the treatments also kill immune cells and suppress the immune system.

“Ivermectin can kill cancer cells in a way that drives the host immune response—what we call immunogenic cell death (ICD),” Dr. Lee said.

Dr. Lee’s research found that when mice with breast cancer received ivermectin, immune cells would begin to appear in tumors that previously had none. This process is known as turning “cold” tumors “hot.”

“Genuinely speaking, patients with hot tumors have better clinical outcomes with a lower risk for recurrence and live longer, so there’s a lot of interest in what regulates whether tumors are hot or cold,” Dr. Lee said.

However, tumors continued to grow in mice given ivermectin alone, meaning the drug is not enough by itself. Dr. Lee reasoned that ivermectin could synergize with immune checkpoint inhibitor anti-PD1, an immunotherapy drug. Immunotherapy is a relatively new form of anti-cancer therapy that strengthens the body’s immune system to fight cancer. While some immunotherapies have broad immune-strengthening effects, the most commonly used ones target only a specific subset of the immune system.

After they were once again injected with cancer cells, the mice whose tumors were cleared after this combination therapy no longer formed new tumors.

Read the full story in The Epoch Times.