Common Diabetic Drug Fights Cancer Stem Cells

SubtleGuest writes "In the latest issue of Cancer Research, a breakthrough study shows that Metformin, a cheap and common diabetic medicine, kills cancer stem cells — the cells postulated to be responsible for tumor resistance and recurrence after chemotherapy (research abstract here). It has been known that diabetics taking Metformin experience lower cancer rates, and now it is apparent why that may be and how it may apply to non-diabetics as well. When combined with Doxorubicin to kill non-stem cancer cells, the results are nothing short of astonishing: total remission in a mouse xenograft model. The results are achieved at levels below the dosage needed for diabetic control, opening many new avenues in cancer treatment and prevention."

Comments

Oh! No! Cure for cancer found.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The insurance company corporate HQ is all gloom and doom today. Cure for cancer found, people are going to live longer, it will definitely cut into the company profits. The CEOs bonus may even decline by as much as 0.5 Billion dollars (from 2B$). Something must be done.

Our intrepid CEO comes up with a plan. "Let us hire some PR firms to funnel money to our usual shills in the media. Project finding cure for cancer as the major motivation for so many young people to choose medical career and be a general do goody nobody etc etc. So let us paint this cure for cancer in the blackest possible terms. Let us get some astro turfers and scare the politicians that we have not (yet) bought. On the double. I want the cure for cancer canceled by the end of this week. Let us pull it together. We need to save our way of life. OK executive flunkies? Now Scram. My tee time is in 20 minutes. Where is my helicopter?"

Re:Non-human model systems

[moon3]

Ok, bear with me, I am only an upset observer here, I know nothing about their methods, biology etc. But isn't prudent to get the cancer cells into some ecosystem or bioreactor, apply various factors and study them there instead of this Nazi like trial and error research involving those animals ? With the current state of technology one could imagine we should be able understand and see into these things well enough. They claim to be able to sequence much smaller DNA so why not 'sequence' or look into the cancer here. Also inside organisms they are able to highlight and target cancer with some agent and see exactly where the cancer cells are using that PET scanner technique, but unable to use the same path to deliver treatment to those areas. It seams to me that this cancer 'industry' is trying to do prolonged and expensive healing, but not to cure.