‘Game-changing’ treatment for prostate cancer could become available to patients

Scientists part funded by Worldwide Cancer Research have tested close to 1000 existing medicines and discovered that a cheap drug commonly used to treat parasitic worm infection could be a game-changing treatment for prostate cancer.

We are currently developing a clinical study design that will be able to determine the best dose and administration schedule to be used along with docetaxel. The aim would be to allow the drugs to work together while producing the lowest side effects. Once this has been shown to be effective in treating prostate cancer, the combination treatment could be adopted widely in patients with prostate cancer.

Professor Hing Leung Institute of Cancer Sciences at the University of Glasgow

The drug, called mebendazole, is on the World Health Organisation’s List of Essential Medicines and can be purchased from a pharmacist for less than £2 per pill.

The study from the laboratory of Professor Hing Leung was funded by Worldwide Cancer Research, alongside the Prostate Cancer Foundation and Cancer Research UK.

Recently published in the British Journal of Cancer, the study found that mebendazole worked in combination with the commonly used chemotherapy drug docetaxel to enhance its ability to kill prostate cancer cells and abolished tumour growth in mouse models of prostate cancer.

The researchers found that mebendazole and docetaxel work together to kill prostate cancer cells by disrupting the molecular “scaffold” used by cells to divide. This scaffold is vital for cancer cells to grow and divide and the combination treatment was found to drastically increase cancer cell death.

Drug repurposing finds new ways to use existing drugs and fast tracks the process of testing new treatments as the drugs tested have already been used in humans with satisfactory safety records. This makes drug repurposing more time and cost-effective than developing new drugs.