Cancer research has always had a knack for finding treatments in strange places. The Pacific yew tree gave us paclitaxel. Soil bacteria produced doxorubicin. Now scientists are looking at another unlikely source: niclosamide, a drug that has been sitting in medicine cabinets since the 1970s as a tapeworm treatment. It started with a simple observation. Researchers noticed that this antiparasitic drug was killing cancer cells in petri dishes. That curiosity has since grown into a full drug development program. A team recently reported real progress in turning this old medication into a dual-targeting anticancer agent that works against breast and prostate cancers. The Problem with a Good Idea Niclosamide first…