For more than six decades, metformin has been a cornerstone treatment for Type 2 diabetes, long thought to control blood sugar primarily by acting on the liver. New research suggests that part of the drug's effect may come from the brain, revealing a previously hidden mechanism that could reshape future diabetes therapies.
A team at Baylor College of Medicine has identified a brain-based pathway that plays a critical role in metformin's ability to regulate blood glucose. The study, published in Science Advances, points to a protein called Rap1 in the ventromedial hypothalamus, or VMH, as central to this effect.
