Intermittent everolimus administration for malignant insulinoma

Abstract

Insulinoma is a rare form of insulin-secreting pancreatic islet cell neuroendocrine (NE) tumor. The medical treatment of the malignant NE disease of the pancreas deeply changed in the last years, thanks to the introduction of new target molecules, as everolimus. Even if the exact mechanism is not actually known, one of the side effects of everolimus, hyperglycemia, has been demonstrated to be useful to contrast the typical hypoglycemia of the insulinoma. We report the case of a patient with a metastatic malignant insulinoma treated with intermittent everolimus, obtaining an important improvement in the quality of life; this suggests the necessity of preclinical studies to analyze the cellular pathways involved in insulin-independent gluconeogenesis.