A Literature Review on the Future Perspective of Metformin Use for Chemotherapy

Abstract

Many findings show the drug metformin can be possibly used for chemotherapy. This is mainly related with declined incidence and mortality of cancer in diabetic patients and the insulin-lowering effects of metformin. With the supplementary benefits of being willingly accessible, inexpensive, and with good safety profile, metformin can be smoothly shifted for chemotherapy especially in low-income countries. So, this review focuses on the clinical future perspectives of metformin for its anti-cancer therapy according to a search engine on PubMed, Cochrane library and Google Scholar mainly for laboratory studies, case-control, observational, cohort and clinical trial studies. Based on the available data a depth review was done on 43 articles and scholar opinions. Available data suggest that metformin have potential applications for adjuvant, palliative treatment and prevention of cancer. Importantly, metformin use has been associated with a significant decrease in the relative risk of specific cancers, such as prostate, pancreas and breast cancers.

Keywords: Metformin, chemotherapy, cancer, diabetes