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Monica Bertagnolli: Metformin has been shown to reduce inflammation and potentially slow cancer growth

Monica Bertagnolli/LinkedIn

Jan 9, 2025, 13:07

Monica Bertagnolli: Metformin has been shown to reduce inflammation and potentially slow cancer growth

Monica Bertagnolli, Director of the National Institutes of Health, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“Millions of people take metformin for treatment of type 2 diabetes. The drug has been shown to also reduce inflammation and potentially slow cancer growth, but researchers did not know why.

New NIH-funded research from Northwestern University looked at how this powerful drug works in mice, and found metformin blocks a specific part of the cell’s energy-making machinery called mitochondrial complex I.

They found that the drug can target cells that may be contributing to disease progression without causing significant harm to normal, healthy cells.”

More posts featuring Monica Bertagnolli.

Monica Bertagnolli is the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA. She is the President of Alliance for Clinical Trials In Oncology Foundation.

She previously served as the Richard E. Wilson Professor of Surgery in the field of surgical oncology at Harvard Medical School, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a member of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Treatment and Sarcoma Centers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Dr. Bertagnolli is the Founding Chair of the minimal Common Oncology Data Elements (mCODE) executive committee and has held multiple positions nationally, including being Past President and Chair of the Board of Directors of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

In 2021, she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, having previously served on the National Academies National Cancer Policy Forum.