Pilot Study Evaluating the Efficacy and Safety of Metformin in Melanoma

Summary

In western countries, melanoma represents a major mistake of public health by its frequency, lethality and the increasing of incidence. Surgery can cure melanoma diagnosed very early. In other cases, it exists a risk of recurrence of lymph node and visceral. At the stage of visceral metastases, the prognosis of melanoma is catastrophic, with a median survival of 6 months. Indeed, the reference chemotherapy by dacarbazine induces a very limited response rate of 10-20%, the ipilimumab which has been authorized in the second intention, has a response rate of 10%, and other available treatments don't have a superior efficiency. Metformin is an oral antidiabetic of biguanides family which acts by inducing the activation of AMPK, a molecule which is inactivated in many cancers including the melanoma. In agreement with these data, several preclinical studies suggested that metformin has antineoplastic activity. In the case of melanoma, a study published recently has showed that metformin inhibits proliferation of melanoma cells in vitro and we confirmed for our part these results in our laboratory (INSERM U895).

Timeline

Start

2011-08-30

Primary completion

2015-05-28

Completion

2015-11-18

Publications

• Results Montaudie H, Cerezo M, Bahadoran P, Roger C, Passeron T, Machet L, Arnault JP, Verneuil L, Maubec E, Aubin F, Granel F, Giacchero D, Hofman V, Lacour JP, Maryline A, Ballotti R, Rocchi S. Metformin monotherapy in melanoma: a pilot, open-label, prospective, and multicentric study indicates no benefit. Pigment Cell Melanoma Res. 2017 May;30(3):378-380. doi: 10.1111/pcmr.12576. Epub 2017 Apr 22. No abstract available.

Drugs

Indications