Researchers find diabetes drug increases efficacy of anti-cancer therapies in melanoma treatment

Researchers have found a combination of diabetes drugs with anti-cancer therapies increases the efficacy of the latter, according to a study.

In the current issue of the journal Cancer Cell, researchers at the Wistar Institute describe how they were able to increase the effectiveness of anti-melanoma drugs by combining anti-cancer therapies with diabetes drugs.

According to a report in Science Daily, the studies conducted in cell and animal models of melanoma, demonstrated that a subset of drug-resistant cells within a tumour could be destroyed by the combined therapy.

According to Meenhard Herlyn, professor and director of Wistar's Melanoma Research Centre, the researchers found that the individual cells within melanoma tumours were not all identical, and tumours contained a sub-population of cells that were inherently drug resistant, which accounted for the fact that advanced melanoma tumours returned no matter how much they were depleted.

He added, the researchers found that these slow-growing, drug-resistant cells were marked by a high rate of metabolism which made them susceptible to diabetes therapeutics.

He added, the diabetes drug put brakes on the cells, that would otherwise re-populate the tumour, thus allowing the anti-cancer drug to be more effective.

Advanced metastatic melanoma is a disease that has proven difficult to eradicate and though melanoma targeting drugs have proved to be successful tumours  develop resistance to drugs and return, more aggressive than before.

Melanoma is the deadliest, most aggressive form of skin cancer and though surgical treatment in the early stage leads to 90 per cent cure rates, advance melanoma is notoriously resistant to chemotherapy and has a tendency to metastasize, or spread, throughout the body.