A Diabetes Drug for Bone Regrowth?

Dr. Abraham Schneider on Metformin’s Second Act

Could a pill designed for blood sugar control help rebuild the human jaw?

That’s one of the questions driving Abraham Schneider, DDS, PhD, associate professor and chair of the Department of Oncology and Diagnostic Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry. With support from the National Institutes of Health, Schneider is studying how metformin, a widely used and affordable drug for type 2 diabetes, might also help regenerate craniofacial bone — offering a new, cost-effective strategy to treat damage caused by trauma or disease.

“We are trying to regenerate a craniofacial bone that is affected by several conditions, including periodontal disease and trauma,” Schneider said. “So, we are trying to look for new ways of regenerating bone.”

Schneider’s findings could open the door to more accessible, less invasive bone regeneration treatments. In a new video Q&A, Schneider explains how his team is repurposing metformin as a locally delivered therapy, how it triggers the expression of genes linked to bone growth and dentin formation in teeth, and why its affordability makes it such a promising option.

You can read a few of his answers below or watch and listen as he delves deeper into the science behind this innovative research.

Questions

What inspired you to look at metformin, which is a diabetes drug, as a possible solution for regenerating bone?

“I initially started to work on metformin based on a 2005 paper from Europe showing that diabetic patients taking different anti-diabetic drugs — the insulin, metformin — the ones who took metformin were having less diagnosis of cancer, or if they had cancer, their prognosis was much better. So that was my first initial work for metformin,” Schneider said.

Once metformin enters the cell, what does it do to promote bone or tooth regeneration?

“Metformin induces — once it gets into the cells – it induces the expression of different genes that we know are involved in the gene in osteogenesis, or odontogenesis, which is the formation of dentin within teeth,” he explained. “Once you treat these cells with metformin with doses that are physiologically compatible with what a diabetic patient takes by mouth, it will induce gene expression associated with bone formation.”

Beyond bone regeneration, what are the benefits to using metformin?

“I believe that the most important advantage of metformin is cost—it’s very affordable,” Schneider said. “Metformin, which is used by more than 120 million people worldwide as the number one anti diabetic drug for type two diabetes, is very affordable.”