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A research team led by Prof. Joo Hong-gu of Veterinary Medicine at JNU has published a study on the in vivo anticancer effect of fenbendazole, a parasiticide for animals.

Joo’s team studied the anticancer effect of fenbendazole, which is known to have anticancer effects, announcing that in vitro experiments using cancer cells and in vivo experiments using mouse tumor models showed different anticancer effects.

Since the anticancer effect of fenbendazole became known worldwide in 2019, it has been announced that fenbendazole has anticancer effects in various types of cancer cells. However, there have been few studies on the anticancer effect of this drug in vivo.

According to the study by Prof. Joo and his team, fenbendazole showed excellent anticancer effects in experiments using cancer cells in vitro, but there was no anticancer effect in mouse experiments.

The team studied the detailed mechanism of action and found that fenbendazole increased type 2 macrophages and immunosuppressive proteins, rather inducing immunosuppression.

On the other hand, CHOP, an anticancer drug used to treat cancer in animals, showed excellent anticancer effects. The team concluded that fenbendazole may interfere with cancer treatment when dispensed a medication to cancer patients.

Prof. Jo said, "In fact, at first, it was thought that fenbendazole would have an anticancer effect even in a mouse tumor model. However, there was no anticancer effect even in repeated experiments, and rather, evidence related to immunosuppression emerged, which is made confident of the results of the in vivo experiment.", suggesting, "However, research on the anticancer effect of fenbendazole is in the beginning stage, and various tumor models and action mechanism studies are needed.“

The study was led by Jeong Hae-bin (master's student) as the first author, and Kim Si-yeon, a fourth-year undergraduate student, participated as the second author. The research results were published in Current Issues in Molecular Biology on Nov. 8.