More Than Medicine
More Than Medicine
MTM - The Role of Repurposed Drugs in Treating Cancer
Dr. Robert Jackson tackles the controversial yet increasingly compelling topic of repurposed drugs in cancer treatment, sharing remarkable patient stories that challenge conventional medical thinking.
Meet the bladder cancer patient given no hope by her oncologist who achieved complete remission through mistletoe injections. Learn about Joe Tippin, the sole survivor in a lung cancer study who credits mebendazole—an inexpensive anti-parasitic medication—for his recovery. Perhaps most striking is the case of a terminal gallbladder cancer patient told to "get his affairs in order" who showed no evidence of disease after taking ivermectin, mebendazole, and vitamin D3.
While acknowledging the limitations of anecdotal evidence, Dr. Jackson examines emerging clinical data supporting these approaches. The CUSP9 study using nine repurposed drugs showed 30% of glioblastoma patients disease-free after four years—dramatically better than the 5-10% typical with standard care. The METRICS study achieved 64% two-year survival in advanced glioblastoma using four common medications repurposed for cancer treatment.
Dr. Jackson doesn't just talk the talk. When facing a suspected kidney cancer diagnosis himself, he immediately started taking mebendazole while awaiting surgery. "What have you got to lose?" he asks, noting these medications provide an affordable margin of safety alongside conventional treatments.
Are pharmaceutical companies avoiding research into these approaches because there's no profit in off-patent medications? Why aren't more oncologists exploring these options? Listen now to this thought-provoking episode that might just change how you think about cancer treatment options.
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Welcome to More Than Medicine, where Jesus is more than enough for the ills that plague our culture and our country. Hosted by author and physician, dr Robert Jackson, and his wife Carlotta and daughter Hannah Miller. So listen up, because the doctor is in.
Speaker 2:Welcome to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, dr Robert Jackson, bringing to you biblical insights and stories from the country doctor's rusty, dusty scrapbook. Well, rather than interviewing someone about today's topic, I decided that I would share with you my own personal insights. And the question for today is what about repurposed drugs in treating cancer? Increasingly, I have my own patients asking for repurposed drugs for treatment of cancer Some years. Well, let's see.
Speaker 2:One year ago, in 2024, one of my patients came to me. One year ago in 2024, one of my patients came to me and told me that she had metastatic bladder cancer, that it spread to many parts of her body and her oncologist had really told her that he didn't have anything more to offer her. She asked me to refer her to an integrative oncologist in Atlanta who I really did not know at the time, and I agreed to do so, and then I did not see her for eight months. The next time I saw her, eight months later, she had regained all of the weight that she had lost. She was feeling better than she had felt in two years and she had recently gone to her oncologist, who performed a repeat PET scan and there was no evidence of cancer in her body. I was amazed and I was very impressed at how she had regained the health and the weight that she had lost. Well, she was radiant and she was very thankful that I was willing to refer her to an integrative oncologist that I didn't even know. She was so thankful. Well, that was amazing to me. And she told me that he had treated her with mistletoe injections. Well, I did a little research on that and it turns out mistletoe is used in Europe extensively for treating cancer. Well, I had never heard of that. I had never heard of that in the United States, and she had done quite well with the mistletoe injections.
Speaker 2:Well, fast forward a little bit and in early 2024, I read about a man named Joe Tippin and he had broadcast his story on the internet. He was one of multiple people in a lung cancer study and everybody in the study died except for Joe Tippin. Turns out, a friend of Joe's had recommended that he take Mabindazole, which is an anti-parasite drug, and he was the only one in the study who survived. Well, joe shared that with his doctors. Joe shared that with his doctors. They were not impressed, and Joe was incensed that they were not excited that he had survived because of taking Mabindazole. Well, mabindazole is an inexpensive drug and Joe realized quickly that these doctors were not impressed because there was no money in it for them. Treating cancer with a drug that you can acquire at tractor supply represented no financial incentive for them, and Joe became quite upset by that and he broadcast it on the Internet, and shortly thereafter, dozens of people began to respond to his website with similar success stories. Well, I hid that under my hat because it didn't represent a randomized control trial. As you know, doctors rely on randomized control trials as their gold standard in medicine, and these were all anecdotal stories, and I'm sure there were people out there who tried his protocol and for them it was not successful. So I was a little bit skeptical.
Speaker 2:Well, fast forward a little bit further and one of my patients came into my office in January of 2025. She was crying, weeping and telling me that her brother-in-law, who lived up in I can't remember but New Hampshire or Vermont, and he had metastatic gallbladder cancer and his doctors had told him to go home and get his affairs in order. They didn't have anything else to offer him, so I just told her. I said well, he's got nothing to lose. Why doesn't he try ivermectin and mabendazole and high-dose vitamin D3? Well, she grasped onto that. She immediately called her brother-in-law. He was an engineer so he had to research it extensively before he would agree to try it. But then he did and I didn't hear anything more for three months.
Speaker 2:She came back to see me for a routine follow-up in March and when I saw her, the first words out of her mouth was this she said Dr Jackson, you saved my brother-in-law's life. And I said well, what do you mean? And she said well, he was skeptical, he had to research everything, but he finally agreed to take the Mabindazole, the Ivermectin and the vitamin D3 in the doses that you recommended. She said he went back to his oncologist at the end of March. He had regained all of his weight, he felt better than he had felt in years and when he had a repeat PET scan it read no evidence of disease. His cancer was completely gone. His oncologist said it was a miracle. So she said to me you saved his life. Well, I'm here to tell you that I became a believer at that moment in time.
Speaker 2:Now there was no randomized controlled trial, but that one patient's response to ivermectin and mabendazole and high-dose vitamin D3, this man who'd been told to go home and put his affairs in order. That success story made me a believer. Made me a believer. Since then, I've seen a few randomized controlled trials with ivermectin, but with only a few patients. So the strength of evidence is still poor, but the sheer volume of anecdotal evidence is becoming overwhelming.
Speaker 2:For example, the Medical Advisor the June 2025 edition of the Medical Advisor has an article entitled Ivermectin Cancer Success Stories 139 case reports. And I'm here to tell you that almost all of the case reports are stage 4 metastatic disease. That means they are hopeless cases. And yet in three to six months after treatment with ivermectin and or mabindazole, these patients are considered free of disease. In other words, their PET scans read no evidence of disease. And this is remarkable 139 cases Now contrast that with the advice of multiple physicians in an article published in PubMed. Now I'm going to read this. This is an abstract from that article and it says Pre-clinical studies, in vitro and animal studies, demonstrate ivermectin's anti-cancer effects, including inhibition of cancer cell proliferation, induction of apoptosis that's when the cells implode and modulation of signaling pathways across various cancers.
Speaker 2:However, clinical evidence in humans is limited, with no large-scale randomized controlled trials. And all that's true. That confirms therapeutic benefits. Observational studies and case reports highlight the risk of self-medication driven by social media touting ivermectin's unproven cancer benefits, which can lead to toxicity in oncology patients in some cases. The lack of clinical studies creates a critical translational gap between pre-clinical results and practical clinical application.
Speaker 2:Despite promising pre-clinical data, the absence of conclusive large-scale human clinical evidence limits the ivermectin's utility in cancer treatment. Its affordability appeals in resource-limited settings, and that's true, because a lot of my patients cannot afford cancer therapy which can run into tens of thousands of dollars. But ethical challenges arise from misinformation which may lead patients to forego proven therapies. Healthcare providers must communicate responsibly to counter misinformation and guide patients toward evidence-based interventions, which really means standard of care that's been accepted for a long time, while supporting rigorous clinical trials to bridge the preclinical to clinical gap. Now, every bit of that is true. Nothing wrong with that, and that's a cautionary abstract in PubMed. Now patients ask me, dr Jackson, what's your advice? And I get that question. I bet twice a day in my medical clinic and I'll tell them it's too early to tell.
Speaker 2:There are insufficient randomized controlled trials to validate the effectiveness of repurposed drugs like ivermectin and mabendazole. The problem is there's no financial incentive for pharmaceutical companies to research generic medications research generic medications. They're not interested in curing your cancer with cheap medications that won't line their pockets with bukus of cash. However, when we keep hearing anecdotal reports of friends and neighbors who have cured their late-stage cancers with a $200 supply of repurposed drugs that they can obtain at Tractor Supply, we can't just ignore those reports.
Speaker 2:My other recommendation is this, and it's a caveat the doctors on X and the doctors on Facebook aren't telling you about their patients that failed to improve on their repurposed drug regimen, and I think that's disingenuous. They're telling you all of their success stories, but they're not telling you about their patients who did not get well. To be fully honest, they should report on every patient's progress, both good and bad. Nothing cures every cancer not ivermectin, not mabindazole, not chemo, not radiation and not even faith healers. Nothing cures all cancers and all of us realize that. I tell my patients that I'm not an oncologist and that they should follow their oncologist recommendations. They should follow the standard of care treatment for their cancer, including surgery first, including surgery first, then chemo and then radiation, or both. If they want to add a repurposed drug or drugs plural then I will help them or I will refer them to a clinic that specializes in that kind of care with repurposed drugs.
Speaker 2:Now, just so you will know, and I want you to know about this, there are two cancer nonprofit organizations out there One's called the Anti-Cancer Fund and the other's the Global Cures Organization, and they partnered together to create the RE-DU Project, and that stands for Repurposed drugs in oncology. The REDU project stands for the repurposed drugs in oncology. Now, the REDU project created a database of all published or planned or active trials of repurposed drugs in cancer in the United States, europe and the World Health Organization trial registries, and they identified 970 trials in 45 countries. Although the REDU project has identified 970 trials of repurposed drugs in oncology, unfortunately very few are what we call actionable, given that many were terminated for lack of enrollment. Others are still recruiting or their recent status is unclear in the registry. They were updated but not filed. They were updated but not filed.
Speaker 2:Most disappointing is that the vast majority tested a single repurposed drug that was added to the standard of care, and it's challenging to find published results of trials testing the addition of multiple agents at the same time. But there are a few, for example. I'm going to give you a couple of examples, and most of these examples are treating glioblastoma. Now why is that? The reason is that glioblastoma is one of the most deadly cancers and it has a highly predictable median overall survival of 15 months and a two-year survival of 27 percent, despite standard of care, combinations of surgery, chemo and radiation and oral maintenance chemotherapy. This highly predictable and, quite honestly, terrible survival allows for comparison and outcomes between the two approaches. Another reason is that glioblastoma has numerous mechanisms that drive its growth. Therefore, it demands a combination of multiple mechanistic approach, and the results of the accumulated data is very impressive.
Speaker 2:Now let me give you two randomized controlled trials that are out there. One's called the CUSP C-U-S-P 9 study. It's a repurposed regimen that uses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 drugs, and those drugs are aprepotant, orinofen, captopril, celecoxib, disulfiram, itraconazole, minocycline, ritanavir and sertraline, and you'll recognize some of those names, but all nine of those drugs are used at one time to treat glioblastoma. A report of their phase one trial in 2021 showed 30% of patients were alive and disease-free at over four years post-treatment. Now compare that to historical prognosis with standard of care therapies. To historical prognosis with standard of care therapies the long-term disease-free survival is greater than four years, and that's extremely rare and typically occurs in under 5 to 10% of patients, and it's mostly limited to exceptional responders. And yet, in this nine-drug regimen, 30% of the patients were alive and disease-free at over four years, and so most of the patients in the standard of care only survived four years at maybe 5%, 10% at the most. And yet in this program using nine repurposed drugs, the survival was 30% at four years. That's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 2:And there's another study called the METRICS study, also using repurposed drugs, published in 2019, included 95 patients. They were all stage four advanced glioblastomas. They were all stage 4 advanced glioblastomas and they used four drugs metformin, a diabetes medicine, atorvastatin, a cholesterol drug, mabindazole, an antiparasitic drug, and doxycycline, an antibiotic. Well, the two-year survival for this regimen was 64%. That's amazing, that's a double wow. So there you go, a repurposed drug treating glioblastoma. So I'm just giving you an idea of how repurposed drugs are being used to treat cancers Now. So here's the next thing. So, dr Jackson, what would you do? Now? That's what my patients, after we discuss it, they'll look at me and say well, dr Jackson, what would you do, knowing what you know? What would you do? Well, I'll be honest. What would you do? Well, I'll be honest.
Speaker 2:Two years ago I had a kidney stone and the CT scan showed that I had a 3-centimeter tumor on my right kidney, and so I ended up having one-third of that kidney removed. In advance, the urologist told me that I had a renal cell carcinoma. We kept asking what's the possibility? This is benign. And he emphatically told me and so did the radiologist this is a renal cell carcinoma. So what did I do? I immediately ordered Mabindazole off the internet it cost me $60, and I began taking 200 milligrams of Mabindazole. And I began taking 200 milligrams of Mabindazole. Now it took six months to get my surgery scheduled. Six weeks, I'm sorry, six weeks to get it scheduled. So for six weeks, thinking that I had renal cell carcinoma, I took Mabindazole. However, after surgery, the pathology showed that I had a benign tumor, an onchocytoma. My urologist said in 25 years he had never seen an onchocytoma. So we thanked the Lord, we thanked my urologist and I quit taking the Mabendazole because I did not need it any longer. So now you know what Dr Jackson would do.
Speaker 2:When I thought I had a kidney cancer, I started taking Mabindazole. So what should you do If you have a cancer. What have you got to lose? For $160 to $200 a month, you can give yourself a margin of safety without any danger to yourself. The ivermectin and the mabendazole and the vitamin D3 are very safe medications and they give you a margin of safety. Your chemo and your radiation cost $10,000 or more per month. What's $200 a month compared to that? I wouldn't hesitate and I wouldn't wait on randomized control trials to validate the effectiveness of the Mabindazole, the Ivermectin, the vitamin D3. I would hurry up and I would run to the internet and I would order myself those medications and I would start taking them. What have you got to lose? It's not going to hurt you and it would certainly give you a margin of safety. Well, you're listening to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, dr Robert Jackson. I hope that's been helpful to you and until next week, remember that your doctor loves you and may the Lord bless you real good.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this edition of More Than Medicine. For more information about the Jackson Family Ministry or to schedule a speaking engagement, go to their Facebook page, instagram or webpage at jacksonfamilyministrycom. Also, don't forget to check out Dr Jackson's books that are available on Amazon His third book, turkey Tales and Bible Truths, and his father's biography on Laughter Silvered Wings the story of a country doctor, a family man, a patriot and a political activist. This podcast is produced by Bob Sloan Audio Productions.
