The medication called Metformin, typically prescribed to treat type 2 diabetes, prevents cancer cells from producing multiple medication resistance and can reverse breast cancer after its appearance, according to a study published in PLOS One magazine.
The study author is Terra Arnason, from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, who together with a group of colleagues has shown that metformin has some antiproliferative activity against multiple types of cancer cells.
Previous clinical meta -analysis studies in cancer patients who already take metformin to treat diabetes, had already suggested that the drug can raise their survival and prevent the appearance of new tumors.
Now, Arnason and his colleagues have tried the effect of metformin on the widely studied MCF7 breast cancer cell line.
The researchers detected that metformin had an antiproliferative effect in MCF7, including cells that were resistant to common chemotherapy doxorubicine;And when the cells were previously treated with metformin, the development of medicines resistance was foreseen or delayed.
In addition, the experiments carried out in both cell crops and in aggressive breast cancer mouse models revealed that metformin reversed the protein markers associated with the MDR after its appearance.
These findings establish that metformin has the potential to reverse breast cancer in cell lines and prevent its appearance, so you have to extend the study schedule to follow cancer cells for many months and determine whether the effect of metformin ispermanent or short duration.