A common diabetes medication may offer new hope for overweight patients battling lung cancer.
Researchers have found that metformin, a decades-old drug used to control blood sugar, could improve immunotherapy outcomes and extend recurrence-free survival in lung cancer patients carrying extra weight.
Lung cancer is currently the leading cause of American cancer deaths, and nearly 235,000 new cases of the illness are diagnosed each year. An estimated 125,070 people will die from the disease in 2024, according to data from the American Cancer Society.
“Our study … suggests that metformin may improve the outlook for overweight and obese lung cancer patients by correcting the detrimental effects that the conditions have on the anti-tumor immune response,” Joseph Barbi, assistant professor of oncology in Roswell Park’s Department of Immunology and co-senior author of the study, told The Epoch Times….