Скачать или смотреть Researchers study how Metformin could treat cancer patients

CINCINNATI (Liz Bonis) - A breakthrough trial at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine could give patients fighting cancer new hope.

This trial is looking at a pill many people already take to manange certain conditions related to hormones such diabetes or polycystic ovary syndrome known as Metformin.

It's a commonly prescribed medication you can pick up by prescription at the pharmacy.

Now, researchers at the UC Cancer Institute are studying it with certain cancers to see if it might lead to better rates of survival.

"What it does is it makes you more sensitive to insulin," said Dr. Trisha Wise-Draper, a medical oncologist.

Dr. Wise-Draper is one of the researchers in the study now giving Metformin to patients in addition to traditional treatment with chemotherapy for head and neck cancer.

"We're are trying to determine if we add Metformin to this treatment does it actually make this treatment more effective, and what is the mechanism that it may be working through," she explained.

Initial reviews found people who took the medication for treatment of diabetes did appear to have better survival with this cancer.

"My study is actually looking at non-diabetic patients because the assumption is that Metfornin may be working through a certain mechanism that allowed patients to fight cancer better," Wise-Draper said.

What's more, she says, is that previous studies have also shown that this kind of research and this kind of medication might make a difference in treating another kind of cancer as well, one that can potentially be just as deadly: pancreatic cancer.

What they found was that when they added Metformin to chemotherapy it was well tolerated in pancreatic patients, and although it wasn't yet statistically significant, they found that if you gave a higher dose of Metformin, a little higher than what diabetic patients are on, was that they did seem to do better.

Now the goal is to find out what made those patients do better. Wise-Draper says it appears there's something in this medication that might inhibit a pathway that normally leads to cancer growth.

Researchers say the medication does not appear to cause blood sugars to go to low in those in the study who don't have diabetes. It appears the body knows how to manage it.