Cimetidine Shrinks Metastases and Improves Cancer Survival

With Cimetidine, Dr. Pan Pantziarka's ReDO Project is Born

Dr. Pan Pantziarka - Repurposing Drugs in Oncology Pioneer

Over-the-counter Tagamet can be purchased at Wal-Mart for 15 cents a pill. And it might just help shrink your cancer metastases. And the reason you haven’t heard about it is precisely because it is so cheap. Only expensive “cancer” drugs get marketed.

The medical literature - aka PubMed - goes way back in highlighting the anti-cancer properties of this cheap antacid. Let us begin in 1992.

“The Hoosier Oncology Group evaluated cimetidine in 42 patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma. There were two complete remissions that lasted for 26 and 33+ months in 38 evaluable patients. There were no partial remissions. Toxicity was minimal.”

Four years later in 1996, Japanese researchers published two case reports of remission of renal cell carcinoma following treatment with cimetidine.

“In the first case, a 61-year-old man carried a diagnosis of metastatic lung and brain tumor of RCC. Interferon therapy was not effective, but after radiation therapy, his brain metastasis revealed a partial response. He received cimetidine 800 mg orally after radiation, and his lung metastasis revealed an almost complete response.”

Unfortunately, following this remission, he expired due to ischemic heart disease - not related to his cancer. However, the second case experienced complete remission and survived.

“A 58-year-old woman presented with a metastatic lung tumor of RCC. We started interferon therapy. But because of general fatigue and anemia, she required discontinuation of interferon therapy. So she received cimetidine 800 mg orally and her lung metastasis revealed a complete response. She remained well and had no evidence of disease.”

A German researcher, C.P. Siegers, published a study in 1999 proposing cimetidine’s three anticancer mechanisms of action:

1. Inhibiting cancer cell division

2. Stimulating lymphocytes that suppress T cell suppressors

3. Inhibiting histamine’s cancer growth effects

Another Japanese study, and one featured in my book on repurposed drugs was published in the British Cancer Journal in 2002 and followed 64 patients with advanced colon cancer treated with chemotherapy, immune therapy, and radiation. All had surgical removal of their tumors. All had chemotherapy with one year of 5-FU. The treatment group of 34 patients received 800 mg per day of cimetidine in addition to the standard treatment noted above.

The results were nothing short of astonishing.

At the ten-year follow-up, the survival in the cimetidine group was 86.4% while in the non-cimetidine group, the survival was only 49.8%. The addition of cimetidine alone improved ten-year survival by a staggering 70%.

Martina Kubecova and colleagues, working out of The Czech Republic, published another study in 2011 detailing how cimetidine beefs up the body’s natural cancer response through strengthening immune function.

She pointed to Morris and Adams’ research in 1995 which demonstrated that cancer patients showed elevated levels of suppressor lymphocyte activity compared to controls, and that cimetidine could restore their immune function to baseline by blocking the stimulatory effects of histamine by cancer cells.

I hope you are already getting a clear picture that restoring immune function helps us fight and heal from cancer while certain other drugs that suppress our immune systems make us more vulnerable to cancer, and in many cases are associated with Turbo Cancers.

But I digress.

Perhaps the most comprehensive treatise on cimetidine against cancer was published in 2014 by Dr. Pan Pantziarka and colleagues entitled, “Repurposing Drugs in Oncology (ReDO)—Cimetidine as an Anti-Cancer Agent.”

In my book, Surviving Cancer, COVID-19 and Disease: The Repurposed Drug Revolution, I mention Dr. Pantziarka’s story. Dr. Pantziarka worked as a mathematician and computer programmer and tragically lost his son and wife to an inherited form of cancer due to Li Fraumeni Syndrome - LFS. The disease is produced by a mutation in the P53 tumor suppressor gene that leaves afflicted patients vulnerable to a variety of cancers that occur at a young age.

The effect on Dr. Pantziarka was profound. He changed his career from a mathematician/computer scientist to a medical researcher almost overnight and became a crusader for the use of repurposed drugs against cancer. The ReDO Project’s first repurposed drug was - you guessed it - cimetidine.

In this video, Dr. Pantziarka explains the purpose of his ReDO project. While the New York Times is not known for writing about the virtues of repurposed cancer drugs, they featured Dr. Pantziarka in their February 25, 2020 article “Repurposing Drugs to Fight Cancer.”

What was left out of the Times’ article was what I consider the most important part of Dr. Pantziarka’s journey, his motivation which is wrapped up in his son’s story, the story of George Pantziarka, the reason behind establishing the George Pantziarka TP53 Trust and the related ReDO project.

George Pantziarka was born July 28, 1993, and before his second birthday, he had lost his 29-year-old mother to a ferocious and inherited cancer syndrome which took her life within weeks. By age 15 George Pantziarka - also suffering from the same inherited disorder, Li Fraumeni Syndrome - had developed rhabdomyosarcoma of the temporalis muscle and osteosarcoma of the jaw.

Following a variety of intensive treatments including chemotherapy, immunotherapy, photodynamic therapy, and chemoperfusion as well as multiple surgeries including jaw reconstruction George passed away at home on April 25, 2011, at the age of 17.

George’s spirit and vibrant soul live on with his father’s passionate research. Fittingly, his parents set up the George Pantziarka TP53 Trust to help others suffering from Li Fraumeni Syndrome and related conditions. This website details his journey, and mentions a book written about George’s life.

Dr. Pantziarka’s ReDO Project’s PubMed inaugural article - published in July 2014 -sets the stage for all other ReDo Project repurposed drug studies to follow. In the report, he identified the purpose of the ReDO project which is to generate research on repurposed drugs for cancer. He identified the first six drugs to be studied:

1. Cimetidine

2. Clarithromycin

3. Diclofenac

4. Itraconazole

5. Mebendazole

6. Nitroglycerin

True to his word, the ReDO Project published a comprehensive review of cimetidine’s published reports against cancer in November, 2014.

Pantziarka and his research team impressively outlined the dosage, toxicity, pharmacokinetics, pre-clinical research, and the large volume of human data. He highlighted the Morris and Adams’ immunological findings in their 1995 study, and he covered all of the case reports and clinical studies mentioned above as well as a Cochrane Review. In addition, the Pantziarka team featured cimetidine’s activity against individual cancers including colorectal, gastric, melanoma, RCC, pancreatic, breast, and Kaposi’s sarcoma.

The ReDO Project has followed through with comprehensive articles on many other repurposed drugs, and they have published a massive listing of hundreds of repurposed drugs with a table of their various anticancer activities.

Today many lives have been saved by those critically thinking patients who have dared to add repurposed drugs to their treatment plans. These include individuals like Kevin Hennings, Ben Williams, Joe Tippens, and countless others - many of whom used cimetidine as a part of their treatment.

Kevin Hennings achieved complete recovery with repurposed drugs including cimetidine from Stage 4 Colon Cancer after chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery had failed. Ben Williams achieved complete recovery from Glioblastoma using a cocktail of repurposed drugs including cimetidine and is alive and well 30 years later.

While cimetidine itself has low toxicity, it bears mentioning that it can interact with other drugs like Itraconazole or Metformin which should not be taken together, or at least be taken under a doctor’s supervision.

Kevin Hennings used cimetidine at a dose of 600 mg twice per day in addition to Fenbendazole 1000 mg per day for 25 days. In addition,

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