在过去的15年中，将糖尿病药物二甲双胍重新用于治疗癌症引起了极大的兴趣。然而，尽管在不同的肿瘤类型中进行了大量的大规模随机临床试验以研究其疗效，但迄今为止的结果令人失望。本文总结了有关二甲双胍抗癌潜力的初始兴趣以及迄今为止各种临床项目的贡献，包括我们在临床上建立了二甲双胍的肿瘤内药效效应。我们还讨论了这一经验可以带来的教训以及是否有必要对二甲双胍在癌症治疗中进行进一步的临床研究。©2023皇冠出版社。

Over the past 15 years, there has been great interest in the potential to repurpose the diabetes drug, metformin, as a cancer treatment. However, despite considerable efforts being made to investigate its efficacy in a number of large randomised clinical trials in different tumour types, results have been disappointing to date. This perspective article summarises how interest initially developed in the oncological potential of metformin and the diverse clinical programme of work to date including our contribution to establishing the intra-tumoral pharmacodynamic effects of metformin in the clinic. We also discuss the lessons that can be learnt from this experience and whether a further clinical investigation of metformin in cancer is warranted.© 2023. Crown.