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Record W4410772980 · doi:10.1159/000546362

Fenbendazole as an Anticancer Agent? A Case Series of Self-Administration in Three Patients

2025· article· en· W4410772980 on OpenAlexaff
William Makis, Ilyes Baghli, Pierrick Martinez

Post-publication record

NatureRetraction
ReasonBias Issues or Lack of Balance;Concerns/Issues about Results and/or Conclusions;Conflict of Interest;Investigation by Journal/Publisher;
Date1/21/2026 0:00
Flagged by OpenAlex?Yes

Source: Retraction Watch, joined by DOI. OpenAlex records retraction as is_retracted, a boolean over a state space with at least four values, so it cannot express an expression of concern, a correction or a reinstatement; it reports them as false, which reads as “fine”.

Bibliographic record

VenueCase Reports in Oncology · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldVeterinary
TopicHelminth infection and control
Canadian institutionsCanadian Society for International HealthAlberta Health Services
Fundersnot available
KeywordsMedicineAdministration (probate law)Series (stratigraphy)Self-administrationPharmacology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Background: Fenbendazole (FBZ), an inexpensive and widely accessible antiparasitic drug used in veterinary medicine, has garnered growing interest for its potential as an anticancer therapy. Preclinical studies suggest that FBZ exerts its anticancer effects through a wide variety of mechanisms. While FBZ has shown promise both in vitro and in vivo studies, clinical evidence supporting its use and efficacy in treating metastatic cancer is currently limited. Case Presentations: This report highlights 3 cases of patients with advanced cancer - including breast, prostate, and melanoma. Two patients achieved complete remission, and one achieved near-complete remission after incorporating FBZ into their treatment regimens alongside other therapies (excluding chemotherapy). All three patients tolerated FBZ without any reported adverse effects, and remission was sustained during follow-up periods ranging from 11 months to nearly 3 years. Conclusion: FBZ demonstrates potential as a novel promising therapeutic option for repurposing in oncology. Its ability to contribute to tumor regression and achieve disease remission warrants further clinical research to establish its efficacy and optimize its use.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.002
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Case report · Consensus signal: Case report
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.004
Threshold uncertainty score0.011

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.002
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0020.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0020.001
Science and technology studies0.0030.002
Scholarly communication0.0010.002
Open science0.0010.001
Research integrity0.0040.003
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0020.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.035
GPT teacher head0.380
Teacher spread0.345 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designCase report
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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