New drug hope for breast cancer patients

Scientists in Manchester have developed a new test to identify patients with aggressive breast cancer who could benefit from a 10p-a-day diabetes drug.

They used a new method based on the food that cancer cells eat, to predict which patients have a poor prognosis. Excitingly, they suggest these patients could benefit from metformin, a cheap and safe diabetes drug which is showing great potential as a cancer treatment.

The findings come from the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Unit at the University of Manchester and Thomas Jefferson University in the USA.

Professor Michael Lisanti, from the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Unit at the University of Manchester, said: “We’ve shown that the saying, ‘you are what you eat’ holds true for cancer. The food that cancer cells consume is crucial to how well a patient does and what treatment they need.

“If cancer cells are consuming high-energy food, this makes a tumour more aggressive and harder to treat. However, patients could benefit from metformin, which cuts off this fuel supply. There is more work to do but this test could be an important new way of tailoring treatments to a patients needs, across a range of cancers.”

Professor Anthony Howell, Director of the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Unit in Manchester, said:  “It is particularly encouraging that some of those treatments might already be in the doctor’s drug cabinet, and cheap to prescribe. We have some way to go but we hope that drugs like metformin will be saving lives of breast cancer patients over the next few years.”

For the full story visit: http://breakthrough.org.uk/media_centre/news_views/diabetes_drug_hope.html