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A cheap, widely-prescribed diabetes drug that some doctors have called a “wonder drug” may hold promise as a colon-cancer-stopping supplement.
Scientists who presented at the American Association for Cancer Research conference in Chicago last week are studying how metformin — the most popular diabetes medication worldwide — interacts with tough-to-treat colon cancer cells. Their research is still early and ongoing.
“Metformin seems like it could have a really interesting supplemental approach to therapy,” Holli Loomans-Kropp, a gastrointestinal cancer prevention researcher at The Ohio State University, who is leading the ongoing study, told Business Insider. “We’re opening up some doors to what this could do.”
Previous research has highlighted how people taking metformin for diabetes have lower colon cancer rates, suggesting the drug may be doing something protective to help prevent cancer from developing. This new study is one of the first to look at whether metformin can actually fight back against colon cancer cells once the disease develops.
Based on what Loomans-Kropp and her team have seen so far in cell culture dishes, metformin looks like it could become a helpful “supplement” to certain cancer treatment regimens in the future. It wouldn’t be potent enough to treat cancer on its own, but could be used alongside other treatments.
She is especially excited about what it might do for a common type of colon cancer with a mutated KRAS gene, which tends to be very tough to treat. Her work, if successful, would require additional positive results in animals and then in people to become a prescription that oncologists can reliably use in the clinic.
A drug that changes how the body uses energy
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One of the big benefits Loomans-Kropp sees to studying metformin for colon cancer treatment is a practical one — it’s a drug that’s already widely accessible and affordable.
“I always like to ask the question: are there medications or agents that we already know, that are already used, that we have safety/toxicity profiles for, that we can then repurpose for something else?”
Metformin has been studied and used by millions of patients worldwide. And it’s cheap — an off-patent, generic drug that costs about 10 to 20 cents per pill.
It’s sometimes referred to as a “wonder drug” by doctors for the beneficial effects it may have on patients who take it, beyond blood sugar control. Scientists have studied it for heart health, cancer prevention, and dementia.
Metformin works for diabetes because it changes the way the body processes and produces sugar. Some scientists suspect it may hold promise for improving aging for a similar reason: because it regulates how the body uses energy, and encourages more self-eating (autophagy), much like exercise or fasting. Perhaps metformin could also inhibit the ways that colon cancer finds energy to grow and develop.
“If metformin maybe can be used to redirect or change how the cell uses energy, which then ultimately changes how it divides and how it proliferates, this could be a mechanism to exploit,” Loomans-Kropp said.
It’s this same energy-shifting mechanism that has longevity researchers excited about metformin as a tool for disease prevention.
Dr. Nir Barzilai, a leading longevity researcher who suspects metformin may be beneficial for healthy aging, says he thinks metformin may be a “suitable” option for cancer prevention. When it comes to fighting cancer, he agrees with Loomans-Kropp that more study is needed.
“Let the science lead,” he told Business Insider in an email.
Loomans-Kropp is hoping that if these initial cancer cell results are successful, she can begin testing metformin as colon cancer treatment on animals within a year.
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