In a recent study researchers have suggested that a routine drug used by thousands of diabetic patients could play a significant role in combating breast cancer. The research team from Manchester has developed a novel test which can identify patients suffering aggressive forms of the disease who could benefit from Metformin.
Researchers state that it could harbinger a significant new method of tailoring treatments that fulfill the requirement of cancer patients. The lead author Prof Michael Lisanti and team revealed that some cancer cells trigger normal healthy cell to nourish them with high–energy foods called lactate and ketones.
It was also discovered that a common drug Metformin, used to treat diabetes could block the process. The cancer patients whose cancer cells were fed off high-energy composites were more prone to perceive their tumours spread or get fatal. Those patients could be helped by being provided the diabetes drug.
This drug would effectively cut off the energy supply for aggressive cells of cancer. These finding were used by researchers to develop a way to envisage patients those who had a deprived prognosis and those could obtain benefit from the drug.
The potential benefits of administering the drug is that it will halt the cancer cells being fed by the normal cells and then the cancer cells would not grow. Therefore this represents a somewhat new approach to the treatment of cancer, explained Prof Lisanti.
This is a very thrilling improvement because they have a whole new area to attack at the cancer cell, how it feeds itself from the normal cells. They can seem to perceive what sorts of other drugs block this interaction between the cancer cell and the normal cell, added Prof Lisanti.