The Testing Evidence for Using Ivermectin for Treating Liver Cancer in Dogs

Executive Summary

• This article covers the evidence I could find for Ivermectin as a treatment for liver cancer in dogs.

Introduction

This article provides an overview covering the evidence for Ivermectin versus liver cancer in dogs.

In many articles on this site, such as the article How Ivermectin Is Useful for Treating Cancer we covered the evidence for the benefits of Ivermectin for cancer. However, the topic of which specific cancers Ivermectin has been proven effective is a constant source of questions.

There are a lot of quotes in this article, but I have a short one for each cancer type. The article uses the term “IVM” to mean Ivermectin.

About the Brightwork Research Treatment Database

A bit about us -- we have a subscription website that provides people with everything they need to know about using Ivermectin for several diseases. Cancer is just one of our most researched areas.

Article Indexes

• Open this link to see just one example Ivermectin article index.
• Open this link to see the full article index. 

Cancer Type #9: Liver Cancer in Dogs

This quote is from the article Deworming Pill May Be Effective in Treating liver cancer in dogs.

Taking advantage of publicly available gene expression data, he first derived a molecular disease signature for HCC – looking at 274 genes that are either up or down regulated in cancerous liver tissues, but not in normal liver tissues.

Then, he looked for drugs that were known to target those genes and found, to his surprise, that a close cousin of a deworming pill, when used in combination with the standard care drug, was highly effective at killing cancerous liver tissue that had been engrafted into experimental mice.

“We found these disease genes were reversed after six weeks of treatment in a patient-derived tissue in mouse model,” Chen said, adding that the advantage of the approach he developed is that it targets a host of genes at the same time, rather than simply targeting a single mutation.

Chen said. “We looked at more than 1,000 drugs before discovering that the deworming pills were effective. This is a very efficient way to do drug discovery.”

Interestingly, Ivermectin is not mentioned by name — instead, just referring to it as a “deworming pill.” However, this study likely used Ivermectin.

The following quote is from the article Ivermectin, a potential anticancer drug derived from an antiparasitic drug.

• Ivermectin effectively suppresses the proliferation and metastasis of cancer cells and promotes cancer cell death at doses that are nontoxic to normal cells.

• Ivermectin shows excellent efficacy against conventional chemotherapy drug-resistant cancer cells and reverses multidrug resistance.
• Ivermectin combined with other chemotherapy drugs or targeted drugs has powerful effects on cancer.
• The structure of crosstalk centered on PAK1 kinase reveals the mechanism by which ivermectin regulates multiple signaling pathways.
• Ivermectin has been used to treat parasitic diseases in humans for many years and can quickly enter clinical trials for the treatment of tumors.

The Impact of Ivermectin on Cancer

The different way that Ivermectin impacts cancer is explained in the following items.

Impact #1: Inhibiting Proliferation of Tumor Cells

Recently, ivermectin has been reported to inhibit the proliferation of several tumor cells by regulating multiple signaling pathways.

The Ivermectin blocking of PAK1 proteins, aka activated kinase, is a reason for this.

The instrumentality of PAK1 in cancer growth is explained in the following quotation from the article Ivermectin: enigmatic multifaceted ‘wonder’ drug continues to surprise and exceed expectations.

In human ovarian cancer and NF2 tumor cell lines, high-dose ivermectin inactivates protein kinase PAK1 and blocks PAK1-dependent growth.

PAK proteins are essential for cytoskeletal reorganization and nuclear signaling, PAK1 being implicated in tumor genesis while inhibiting PAK1 signals induces tumor cell apoptosis (cell death).

PAK1 is essential for the growth of more than 70% of all human cancers, including breast, prostate, pancreatic, colon, gastric, lung, cervical and thyroid cancers, as well as hepatoma, glioma, melanoma, multiple myeloma and for neurofibromatosis tumors.

PAK1 becomes hyperactive in cancer cells for reasons that are not yet understood.

Ivermectin can be viewed as a PAK1 restrictor or modulator (I say modulator as PAK1 is present in normal healthy cells, but an overage of PAK is a prime cause of cancer.)

This means that Ivermectin interferes with a precursor to cancer. This modulating influence on PAK is another reason Ivermectin is effective against many types of cancer.

PAK1 is implicated in multiple cancers if found in the quotation from the article Effect of P21-activated kinase 1 (PAK-1) inhibition on cancer cell growth, migration, and invasion.

Previous studies showed that PAK-1 mediated the growth of prostate PC-3 cell tumor xenografts in athymic nude mice as well as the transforming growth factor-β (TGFβ)-induced prostate cancer cell epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). These studies suggested that PAK-1 plays a major role in prostate cancer progression and is a potential target for prostate cancer therapy. PAK-1 has also been suggested to be involved in the early stages of breast cancer and may partially participate in the mechanisms mediating the transformation of mammary epithelial cells into mesenchymal malignant cells.