Wuxi School of Medicine, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China.
School of Life Science, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China.
J Cancer Res Clin Oncol. 2023 Dec;149(18):16931-16946. doi: 10.1007/s00432-023-05391-w. Epub 2023 Sep 12.
Metformin has been used clinically for more than six decades. Over time, numerous remarkable effects of metformin beyond the clinic have been discovered and discussed. Metformin has been shown to have a favorable impact on cancer therapy in addition to its clinically recognized hypoglycemic effect. However, the antitumor efficacy of metformin in humans has not been clearly demonstrated yet. Hence, a systematic analysis of the existing trials is necessary.
Here, we retrieved clinical trials from the Clinical Trials.gov database to overview the clinical development of metformin for the treatment of cancer, analyze existing clinical results, and summarize some promising applications for specific cancer therapies.
The potential application of metformin contains three directions: Firstly, improvement of metabolic factors associated with treatment effects, such as insulin resistance and peripheral neuropathy. Secondly, in combination with immune checkpoint blockade effects. Finally, use it for the endocrine treatment of hormone-dependent cancers.
Although the outcomes of metformin as a repurposed agent in some trials have been unsatisfactory, it still has the potential to be used in select cancer therapy settings.
二甲双胍已在临床上应用超过六十年。随着时间的推移，人们发现并讨论了二甲双胍除了临床公认的降血糖作用之外的许多显著的临床外效果。除了其临床公认的降血糖作用外，二甲双胍已被证明对癌症治疗有积极影响。然而，二甲双胍在人类中的抗肿瘤疗效尚未得到明确证实。因此，有必要对现有试验进行系统分析。
在这里，我们从 ClinicalTrials.gov 数据库中检索了临床试验，以概述二甲双胍治疗癌症的临床发展，分析现有的临床结果，并总结一些针对特定癌症治疗的有前景的应用。
二甲双胍的潜在应用包含三个方向：首先，改善与治疗效果相关的代谢因素，如胰岛素抵抗和周围神经病变。其次，与免疫检查点阻断作用相结合。最后，将其用于激素依赖性癌症的内分泌治疗。
尽管一些试验中二甲双胍作为重新定位药物的结果并不令人满意，但它仍然有可能在某些癌症治疗环境中使用。
