FLICKR, CREATIVE COMMONS, JAMIESRABBITS
The drug metformin is used in a range of metabolic disorders, but new research published today in Stem Cell demonstrates its capacity to activate a pathway that promotes the genesis of new neurons in the brains of mice, leading to better performances in a spatial learning test.
“It’s gratifying to see it has a role outside diabetes,” said Fredric Wondisford, director of the Johns Hopkins Diabetes Research and Training Center, who was not involved in this study. Wondisford was part of the team that previously discovered metformin’s role in the same pathway in liver cells, where it helps to regulate metabolism.
Study co-author Freda Miller and colleagues were interested in how stem cells in the brain develop and differentiate, and had investigated the aPKC-CBP pathway—which ...
