When Joe Tippens was diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer and told he only had months to live, he refused to give up. He contacted MD Anderson, where chemo and radiation shrunk the tumor in his lung. But his doctors told him there was no cure for the disease. And so he started taking something different: a dog dewormer.

The regimen, known as the Joe Tippens Protocol, includes fenbendazole (also called fenbendazole-C or Panacur C), an over-the-counter dog medicine used to treat parasites. It also includes a supplement with curcumin, CBD oil and vitamin E. Tippens takes 222 mg of fenbendazole per day, seven days a week, with food.

According to research from the University of Toronto, fenbendazole works by suppressing cancer cell growth. It inhibits the formation of microtubules, which essentially provide structure to all cells. The same mechanism has been used to kill other cancers in mice, including pancreatic cancer.

Another drug used to fight parasites, mebendazole, works in a similar way. It interferes with tubulin, which is both the microtubules’ “skeleton” and a highway for transporting proteins within the cell. By preventing tubulin from forming, mebendazole cuts off the parasites’ supply of nutrients and starves them to death. It’s been shown to be effective against glioblastoma, another type of brain cancer, in mice. It also prevented cancerous liver tissue from growing when engrafted into experimental mice. Researchers from Johns Hopkins, MD Anderson and other top medical centers are investigating fenbendazole, mebendazole and other related drugs as possible cancer treatments. dewormer for cancer