Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have been able to identify proteins that were released from muscles during exercise in relatively small quantities. Using their method, the team was able to demonstrate that the neurotrophic factor prosaposin was produced during exercise. Prosaposin is “a well-known CNS neurotrophic factor, but has never been seen to come out of muscle or fat,” Bruce Spiegelman told BioWorld. Spiegelman is a researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Stanley J. Korsmeyer Professor of Cell Biology and Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Investigators working at University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, have discovered that the ubiquitin ligase UBR2 is up-regulated and sufficient for targeting the myosin heavy chain protein for the degradation characteristic of cancer cachexia. UBR2 knockout or pharmacological inhibition could prevent cachexia in mice. Confirmatory observations were noted in cancer cachexia patient-derived tissues.
Wellstat Therapeutics Corp. has described compounds for co-delivery of uridine and ketoleucine with high bioavailability reported to be useful for the treatment of muscle atrophy, sarcopenia and cachexia.
A new Drosophila melanogaster larval model recapitulates key aspects of tumor-induced cachexia, including muscle wasting, loss of tissue integrity and lipid mobilization, the authors of a multicenter Australian study reported in the September 1, 2021, online edition of Developmental Cell.
A multidisciplinary team of researchers has identified Upd3, a cytokine, as an important modulator of tumor growth and host wasting via activation of JAK/STAT signaling.
Cachexia, Teresa Zimmers told the audience at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), is "woefully understudied for the outsized impact it has on cancer patients." The condition, which is currently defined as weight loss and muscle wasting, is the direct cause of death in an estimated 25% to 30% of cancer patients. But it is the main subject of only 0.1% of research papers and 0.2% of clinical trials.
A study led by scientists at the Korean Research Institute of BioScience and Biotechnology in Daejeon is the first to demonstrate that Dilp8/INSL3-Lgr3/8-NUCB, neuropeptide y signaling may be a potential therapeutic target in cancer anorexia and cachexia, which is associated with increased cancer mortality.
