In Episode 60, we step outside the realms of mental health and anesthesia to explore a groundbreaking 2026 study by Korkmaz and colleagues that asks a shocking question: can ketamine fight cancer directly? We dive into an in vitro study focusing on HT-29 colorectal cancer cells, exploring the potential of repositioning this common anesthetic in the oncology world.

Cancer cells are notoriously hard to kill because they deactivate apoptosis—the body’s natural cellular suicide program. This study reveals that ketamine effectively flips this self-destruct switch back on, showing a marked increase in early apoptosis. It alters the delicate balance of key proteins by downregulating Bcl-2, which protects the tumor, and upregulating Bax, which tears the cancer cell apart. At the same time, ketamine acts as an anti-proliferative agent, stopping the cancer cells from aggressively multiplying.

How does a dissociative anesthetic achieve this? Molecular docking simulations and gene expression profiling show that ketamine interacts with NMDA and EGFR receptors, disrupting vital signaling pathways like ERK and AKT. While these findings are currently limited to petri dishes rather than human clinical trials, they open the door to a fascinating future where the anesthetics used during tumor-removal surgeries might actively help fight the disease itself.

Reference:

Korkmaz, I. F., Elgun, T., Aktas, Ç., Gündeğer, E., & Yurttas, A. G. (2026). Ketamine induces apoptosis and inhibits proliferation in HT-29 colorectal cancer cells. Biomedicines, 14(4), 907. https://doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines14040907

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