A Daily Pill for Cancer?

Let me tell you a quick story about my friend. I am not speaking about Evan, my medical colleague who contracted brain cancer 3 1/2 years ago, the one given a year to live, but who thrives now, partly because he added repurposed drugs to his cancer treatment. 

Today, I am talking to you about another colleague of mine. Let’s call him Abe to protect his identity. He works in the legal field, and I have known him for 35 years. He has worked hard all his life, raised a family, and is looking forward to retirement. But unfortunately, Abe was just diagnosed with colon cancer and is looking at major surgery and a visit to the Oncologist. 

Although I am happy to have written a book on repurposed drugs that can help cancer patients survive, I am upset that I did not do more to help Abe prevent his tumor. Unfortunately, as for most conditions we see as physicians, preventing a disease is far easier than treating one.

What if Abe had taken repurposed drugs to prevent cancer? What if he had been on a cocktail of multiple agents that lowered the risk of contracting cancer for the past three decades? Would he have still contracted colon cancer? I don’t believe he would be facing the stress of major surgery, nor would he be looking at possible radiation and chemotherapy. I felt bad for Abe and knew I could have done more with my knowledge of repurposed drugs. The word needs to go out that these medications are not just limited to cancer treatment. Perhaps their best use is in cancer prevention. And now, following the pandemic, we are witnessing a measurable surge in cancers, as some doctors have called “turbo cancers.”

We take a pill for blood pressure, another for diabetes or prediabetes, and another for cholesterol. In addition, we take more pills for sleep, indigestion, and blood thinning.

Why is it that nobody takes a daily pill to prevent cancer?

Perhaps it is because there is no money to be made by doing that. Big Pharma controls our pill-taking habits by controlling what medical schools teach and what medical boards tell their doctors, so it should come as no surprise that preventing cancer is bad for their business - unless, of course, they patent a new and expensive drug that can help prevent cancer which has not yet been done.

However, plenty of old drugs have been repurposed for their cancer-fighting activity, and these could be utilized to lower a person’s risk of developing cancer. 

For example, Metformin, a drug used to treat Type II Diabetes has been associated with massive cancer reduction in those who take it. And the greater the dose and the longer they take it, the lower the incidence of many cancers.

For example, the average cancer risk is one-third lower in those who take Metformin over time. A Taiwanese ovarian cancer study found a reduction of almost 80% in those taking the most Metformin. In another study, those who took Metformin for the longest time and highest dosages saw a 75% reduction in prostate cancers. Another study found a 55% reduction in the incidence of bladder cancer.

Study after study has shown that users of Metformin for non-cancer conditions have a massively lower risk of contracting cancers. There are many reasons for this, but the main one seems to be that the drug interferes with cancer metabolism and promotes P-53 tumor suppressor function. In addition, it lowers inflammation, and insulin levels, reduces cancer angiogenesis, and improves T-cell immunity.

Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of the DNA double-helix structure and Nobel Prize laureate, takes it for its anti-cancer properties. 

Aspirin is another drug that has enormous anti-cancer activity. Dr. Harvey Risch, the long-time editor of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, published a study showing regular aspirin use is associated with nearly a 50% reduction in the development of pancreatic cancer. Aspirin lowers NkfB, which means lowered inflammation and improved immune response. As a result, it tends to diminish the tumor’s ability to spread or metastasize. Long-term aspirin use has been associated with a 30 - 40% reduction in distant metastasis.

Another drug is Lipitor, also known as Atorvastatin. A Danish study found a 15% reduction in cancer death in those who took statins. This is because lipophilic statins block the mevalonate pathway.

In my book, I refer to the Statin, Aspirin, and Metformin preventative cocktail as “SAM,” a term originally coined by Dr. Mark Moyad, a professor at the University of Michigan Medical Center who has written extensively on this cancer preventive regimen. 

As always, I do not advise anyone to take prescription medicine without a personal physician’s careful examination and guidance. However, with that said, imagine how many lives could be saved if everyone knew about the power of repurposed drugs to prevent cancer. In addition, imagine how many patients could be spared the stress and expense of a cancer diagnosis. The time has come to make repurposed drugs for cancer prevention mainstream. For those who have developed cancer, I continue to advise an evaluation at the world-renowned Care Oncology Clinic where repurposed drugs are already mainstream.