‘There are enough reports of it, enough interest in it, that we actually did — ivermectin, in particular — did engage in sort of a better preclinical study of its properties and its ability to kill cancer cells,’ Letai said at a January event with NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and other senior agency officials.
Bhattacharya said at the same event: ‘If lots of people believe it and it’s moving public health, we as NIH have an obligation, again, to treat it seriously.’
Not present at the event was Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a long-time Covid vaccine skeptic who has pushed the claim that an unhealthy government–Big Pharma alliance suppressed ivermectin simply because it isn't profitable.
In laboratory studies, ivermectin has been shown in cell cultures to kill cancer cells and suppress tumors. But there is currently no reliable clinical evidence from human trials to support its use as an effective cancer treatment.
In the rest of his comments at the NIH event last month, Letai appeared to temper expectations for the drug, saying at one point, ‘It’s not going to be a cure-all for cancer,’ and adding later that even if there are signals of anti-cancer properties in the preclinical studies, ‘I can tell you again, it’s not a really strong signal.’
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