A common diabetes drug may prevent leukemia, mouse study suggests (Metformin)

Medical Xpress / University of Cambridge / Nature ^ | April 17, 2025 | Malgorzata Gozdecka et al

[ConservativeMind]

Metformin, a widely used diabetes drug, could prevent a form of acute myeloid leukemia in people at high risk of the disease, a study in mice has suggested.

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is an aggressive form of blood cancer that is very difficult to treat. Thanks to recent advances, individuals at high risk of AML can be identified years in advance using blood tests and blood DNA analysis, but there's no suitable treatment that can prevent them from developing the disease.

In this study, Professor George Vassiliou investigated how to prevent abnormal blood stem cells with genetic changes from progressing to become AML. The work focused on the most common genetic change, which affects a gene called DNMT3A and is responsible for starting 10–15% of AML cases.

The research team examined blood stem cells from mice with the same changes in DNMT3A as seen in the pre-cancerous cells in humans. Using a genome-wide screening technique, they showed that these cells depend more on mitochondrial metabolism than healthy cells, making this a potential weak spot.

The researchers went on to confirm that metformin, and other mitochondria-targeting drugs, substantially slowed the growth of mutation-bearing blood cells in mice. Further experiments also showed metformin could have the same effect on human blood cells with the DNMT3A mutation.

Dr. Gozdecka said, "Metformin is a drug that impacts mitochondrial metabolism, and these pre-cancerous cells need this energy to keep growing. By blocking this process, we stop the cells from expanding and progressing towards AML, while also reversing other effects of the mutated DNMT3A gene."

In addition, the study looked at over 412,000 UK Biobank volunteers and found that people taking metformin were less likely to have changes in the DNMT3A gene. This link remained even after accounting for factors that could have confounded the results.

[ConservativeMind]

Metformin might prevent AML by blocking a key process that goes awry.

[ConservativeMind]

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[Flaming Conservative]

Metformin is turning out to be a wonder drug. Some people can’t take it because it can cause bad diarrhea. I’ve been on it off and on for years, and tolerate fine, but some don’t.

[trebb]

I always cringe when they use phraseology like, “It might help”, “It is not known how it works”, and “Some patients saw some improvement”.......

[mewzilla]

I’ve seen papers relating to this that go back over a decade.

Is there a reason suddenly it’s on the front burner...?