Cancer cachexia is a syndrome of progressive weight loss and muscle wasting that occurs in many advanced cancer patients. Cachexia is caused by negative energy balance, meaning that energy intake does not meet the energy demands of the body. Most often, this results from a combination of decreased energy intake and increased energy expenditure due to metabolic dysregulation in the context of an inflammatory environment. Cachexia causes severe weakness and fatigue, decreases effectiveness and tolerability of anti-cancer therapies, increases cancer-related complications and medical costs, and significantly contributes to mortality.
How is the heart involved in cancer cachexia?
We know that cardiac muscle undergoes significant atrophy, similar to skeletal muscle. We also know that the heart muscle does not function as well, which means that cardiomyopathy in cancer cachexia may be a contributor to the weakness, fatigue, and skeletal muscle wasting characteristic of this syndrome. Much more work needs to be done to understand why the heart does not function well. That is what we are trying to discover in the Law Laboratory.
How do we study cardiomyopathy in cancer cachexia?
The Law Laboratory is a pre-clinical laboratory that uses cellular and animal models to study disease. We measure how gene and protein expression and the presence of metabolites change in heart tissue and cardiac myocytes from cachectic animals. We also do functional assays to assess cardiac myocyte contraction/relaxation and calcium cycling.