Proliferative and apoptotic effect of metformin on neuronal culture

Metformin (1,1-dimethyl biguanide hydrochloride); extract obtained from the plant which name is Galega officinalis. Metformin is one of the drugs commonly used to treat Type 2 diabetes(DM2). Metformin reduces hepatic glucose production, increase insulin sensitivity and glucose utilization in diabetic patients. At the molecular level the effect of metformin is explained by the effect of the AMPK enzyme activation. In addition, as in mammalian cells activation of AMPK inhibition of mTOR, it able to control of protein synthesis and cell proliferation. This information strengthened the hypothesis that metformin reduce the risk of cancer and slow tumor growth. Studies in recent years, especially in animal models and cell cultures have shown that metformin has toxic effect in the cancer cells. For this reason, we also study the effectiveness of metformin in human glioblastoma multiforme (T98G) cell lines. On the other hand in our study; on T98G cells, effect of metformin the presence of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) that is known to cause apoptosis via oxidative stress in cells.Primarily, T98G cells to cultures for experiments, then MTT method and morphological evaluation, cytochemical fluorescent staining, TUNEL, caspase-3 activity and agarose gel electrophoresis method using the effect of metformin on T98G cells for determine proliferation and apoptosis were investigated.In conclusion, the findings of our work; metformin significant apoptotic effect on the cell line T98G and in the presence of H2O2 that this effect increases. Another finding of our study is this effect of metformin is dose-and time-dependent.