This could change the way cancer is treated

A combination of drugs, including aspirin and statins, are being tested to treat cancer and other illnesses. There is mounting clinical evidence that the "repurposing" of existing drugs could offer effective new treatments.

Right now we’d like to take a few moments to tell you all about aspirin. Did you know that aspirin may help treat cancer as well as headaches. The pain’s gone, so tension’s gone. It’s not the only drug being used to treat an illness that it wasn’t originally intended for.
But for some people, using old drugs for new treatments or “repurposing” can be the difference between life and death. I still can’t find the appropriate words to describe how horrible it is to have to tell your own parents that you’ll be dead before them.
Melanie Kennedy, mother of two young boys was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013. It soon spread to her liver. She was given five years to live. If you have an incurable cancer you want to explore every option.
Nobody wants to leave their children early and nobody wants to die young. Determined to see her children grow up she began to search for experimental treatments to help combat the disease. I did a lot of research into what else was out there because I wanted to outlive the five years. I looked into quite a few different options which is how I found out about repurposed drugs.
Through a private-health clinic Melanie began a course of treatment using repurposed drugs
while continuing conventional chemotherapy with the NHS. The clinic recommended she take an antibiotic called doxycycline, metformin, usually used to treat type-2 diabetes, a statin, or cholesterol-lowering drug, and mebendazole, a worming agent.
All these drugs were designed for other purposes but may have anti-cancer properties. In simple terms repurposing drugs is taking an existing drug that has been licensed for a particular therapeutic indication or a medical condition and seeking to use it in a different clinical setting.
A very good example is that of aspirin which actually was initially used as a painkiller when it was first licensed. Nowadays we predominantly use it as a blood thinner but actually there are clinical trials in progress looking at its role in an anti-cancer setting.
So why aren’t more drugs repurposed?
When a new drug is brought to market it is protected by a patent giving the company that developed it exclusive rights to sell it. This stops copycat drugs being sold by competitors allowing the developer to make a profit. But many existing drugs that could be repurposed are no longer covered by patents so companies have less incentive to pay the cost of testing them for new conditions.
And there’s another stumbling block. Doctors are reluctant to prescribe a drug to treat an illness that it wasn’t designed for. We’re very loth to use medications outside of the particular reasons that they’re licensed for use. And that’s because if there are any issues when patients then take those drugs the doctor is ultimately responsible. To make sure Melanie isn’t having problems with the experimental drugs she must have regular checkups.
Hi Mel, lovely to see you. Do you want to give me a little bit of an overview? How have things been since we last spoke to you? – Great, I’ve had another scan. After a two-year course of chemotherapy along with repurposed drugs her scans are showing no new evidence of disease. When I got the news that my liver was clear. I didn’t believe him. I made him turn the computer monitor around and I read it for myself. Doctors can’t say with certainty that her dramatic improvement was caused by the repurposed drugs.
For that the trial she’s part of must be completed. But there’s a lot of clinical evidence to suggest that there’s a huge untapped medicine cabinet of generic drugs that could help treat cancer.
And many other conditions including motor neurone disease and schizophrenia. There are many benefits of repurposing medications. I suppose the main one is in terms of both time and money.
Most new medications cost over $2bn to bring through the whole clinical-trial process and actually license them for use in clinical practice. That takes a long time and is expensive for drug companies and for the NHS.
Drug repurposing is cheaper than developing new medicines because the drug has already been tested for safety which itself is hugely expensive. Melanie believes this trial has saved her life.
But for more trials like this to take place governments will need to change the incentives for pharmaceutical companies and solve the patent problem.

[sarahfox]

Ivermectin comes to mind as an excellent repurposed drug

[paulclark]

Solve the patent problem? I think you mean the greed problem

[Jollyprez]

Bingo - the anti-parasitic is the key. Guess what, hydroxychloroquine is an anti-parasitic, too.

[sheilacape]

I agree with that... theres TOO many stipulations on what and how a person can heal themselves, without so many disgusting rules and regulations!!! After all, it should be up to the individual!! PERIOD

[viktorpanko]

I've been on the Care Oncology protocol myself for bone cancer for 2 weeks now, very few side effects. Anybody who knows someone with advanced cancer or even just diagnosed, I would highly recommend this protocol, it works alongside chemotherapy too. Just getting the doctor that's treating you to agree with it, the problem is a lot of cancer doctors don't want to hear it, it's their way or the highway.

[zabelicious]

Well my dad was taking aspirine, statin and metformin and he got prostate cancer. There is only one left, the de-worming one.

[danterj]

This is Funny in the end of the video, the narrator saying government need to change the regulations to solve this problem, but we forget the government is who create the problem to test this.

[hafeezullahbutt]

If aspirin works then one should take salix alba (weeping willow) leaves and stems bark tea which contains the natural aspirin having no side effects.

[andrewblah]

the mabendazol is the only cancer killer here. Also fenbendazole.

[beckymoondrop]

Look up Joe Tippen's Protocol too but don't skip days like he did unless you are on other treatments. Many people are having lots of success with fenbendazole (Panacure and Safegaurd) along with the supplements Joe lists.

[ericday]

FYI for people in the southwest US, all of these can be purchased very easily (and cheaply) just across the border in Mexico.

[silvialogan]

I am so happy that this clinical trial which she is in seems to be working well. It is too bad that these clinical trials are not used too often and we depend mostly on surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy in order to try and treat the cancer.

[humvee]

I've been on the COC Protocol for 14 months for Prostate Cancer, so happy I did this.

[mykulpierce]

What's interesting is that some parasites are known to cause cancer. Would be interesting if that's the mechanism behind why a deworming agent works to "cure" cancer. By removing the cause of the cancer tissue and likely the body simply removes the cancer cells as it normally would afterwards.

[fernandgauthier]

This could change the way people suffer from cancer

[missdesireindependance]

How do you find doctors willing to give these drugs? Most doctors won’t give them.

[Mrs.TJTaylor]

Thrilled for a Melanie, her kids and her parents! This is so interesting. Thank you.

[Hippo_Heli]

If Drug companies are not willing, then give the money to Universities. I'm sure they're happy to test them.

[DA-ouhv]

Too bad we stuck ourselves with a money based society. Evolving from a money based society will be one of the larger challenges of the next 100 years.

[chiarabay]

Instead of metformin, take berberine (this is actually one of the few herbs that has been extensively tested and is often given to diabetics who have resistance to metformin),