Metformin sensitizes lung cancer cells to treatment by the tyrosine kinase inhibitor erlotinib

Lung cancer is one of the deadliest malignant tumors with limited treatment options. Although targeted therapy, using tyrosine-kinase inhibitors such as erlotinib (Erlo), has shown therapeutic benefit, only 15 % patients with mutated epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) in lung cancer cells are sensitive. Therefore, additional therapeutic strategy should be developed. In this study, we found that metformin (Met), which is widely used for the treatment of type 2 diabetes (T2D), sensitized lung cancer cells bearing wild-type EGFR to Erlo treatment by enriching cancer cells expressing higher levels of EGFR with persistent phosphorylation. As a consequence, combination of Met and Erlo more efficiently inhibited the growth of lung cancer cells both in vitro and in mice with xenografted tumors. Our results suggest a novel approach to treating lung cancer cases which are originally resistant to Erlo.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  OncoTarget

• Publication date

  2017-11-21

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.18632/oncotarget.22596PMID 29312591PMCID 5752504
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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