Article Source: Johns Hopkins Medicine / 2014
A serendipitous finding in lab mice made by research professor Gregory Riggins and neurosurgeon Gary Gallia is creating excitement as a possible treatment for glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor.
Riggins’ lab is known for discovering cancer-causing gene mutations and for assessing new drugs at the preclinical phase. Ordinarily, he and his colleagues have no trouble triggering glioblastoma cells to proliferate in mice. But over the course of several months in 2009, they encountered one group of mice in which the tumors would not grow. After some investigating, the scientists discovered that the mice had been treated with the veterinary antiparasitic drug fenbendazole.
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