Salinomycin is an antibacterial and coccidiostat ionophore therapeutic drug. Salinomycin has been shown by Piyush Gupta et al. of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Broad Institute to kill breast cancer stem cells in mice at least 100 times more effectively than the anti-cancer drug paclitaxel. The study screened 16,000 different chemical compounds and found that only a small subset, including salinomycin and etoposide, targeted cancer stem cells responsible for metastasis and relapse. The mechanism of action by which salinomycin kills cancer stem cells specifically remains unknown, but is thought to be due to its action as a potassium ionophore due to the detection of nigericin in the same compound screen.Salinomycin is the key compound in the pharmaceutical company Verastem's efforts to produce an anti-cancer-stem-cell drug.
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