Repurposing drugs, do they work on NSCLG?

[Ian_cee]

Have been told about taking Atorvastatin, Metformin, doxycycline and mebendazole either during or after chemo to lessen the chance of it recurring.

Anyone got any thoughts on this? does it work for lung cancer?

Thanks

Ian

[RoyCastleHelpline Partner Ask the Nurse Roy Castle]

Dear Ian_cee

It is an interesting area that more research is being conducted in. This article dated 2019 from The Cancer Journal briefly talks about repurposed drugs in the use for non-small cell lung cancer but also states that more clinical trials are needed in this area:

journals.lww.com/journalppo....

In people with type 2 diabetes that were on Metformin seemed in general to fair better with tumour reduction in a variety of different cancers. There are a number of articles from Diabetes UK on the discussion of this:

diabetes.co.uk/diabetes-med...

At the moment all the recommendations from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) do not include the drugs you have mentioned for use of non small cell lung cancer, however progress is being made with combination therapy which is Immunotherapy combined with Chemotherapy.

It will be very interesting when results of these trials come out and hopefully show that these well used drugs that you have mentioned will have a place in treating lung cancer as well as many other cancers.

Our contact details if you wish to discuss anything are [e-mail] or you can call our freephone nurse led helpline number on 0800 358 7200

Kind regards

The Roy Castle Support Team

[Ian_cee in reply to RoyCastleHelpline]

Interesting stuff, have been recommended to read "How to Starve Cancer" which focusses on Repurposing drugs.