Diabetes drugs influence against cancer

The researchers from Whitehead Institute have identified a key mitochondrial pathway that helps to instill cancer cells with the aptitude to survive in the low-glucose situations. The cancer cells could create defects in glucose utilization. Further the pathway identified can help to predict the tumor and also which anti-diabetic drugs will be useful in the pathway. The research is published in scientific journal Nature. The researchers first tested the marked hypothesis in vitro on the 13 cell lines with utilizing glucose defects and mitochondrial DNA mutations. Through deep study they found that anti-diabetic drug reserved the tumor’s growth. Richard Possemato, postdoctoral researchers in Whitehead Member David Sabatini's lab explains, “No one really understood why cancer cells had these responses or whether they were important for the formation of the tumor. The cancer-relevance of the alterations that we found as underlying this response to low glucose will still need to be investigated.”