CANCAN-RUTGERS

癌症恶病质(CC)是一种全身性、代谢性消瘦综合征，其特征是由于骨骼肌和脂肪组织消瘦而导致体重减轻。约80%的癌症患者患有CC，这会导致表现状态下降、对化疗不耐受并增加死亡率。人们对这种衰弱的疾病知之甚少，也没有有效的治疗方法。如果存在CC治疗，它将改善治疗反应，提高生活质量，并延长生存时间。经过50年的研究，该领域专注于确定促进末梢器官萎缩的途径--对我的恶病质影响最大的器官。虽然这项工作卓有成效，但它并没有导致确定CC的上游介质，也没有产生有效的治疗方法。迫切需要高质量的发现科学和更详细的临床表型。我们创建了一个虚拟研究所，由不同的国际多学科科学家和临床医生组成，他们拥有癌症、新陈代谢、神经内分泌功能、免疫学、人类代谢性疾病、临床前模型和临床表型方面的专业知识。我们假设CC是由肿瘤内在因素驱动的，这些因素激活神经激素疾病通路，然后导致厌食症、代谢功能障碍和组织萎缩。

Cancer cachexia (CC) is a systemic, metabolic wasting syndrome featuring body weight loss due to skeletal muscle and adipose tissue wasting. CC is suffered by ~80% of cancer patients that causes reduced performance status, intolerance to chemotherapy, and increased mortality. This debilitating condition is poorly understood and has no effective treatment. If CC therapy existed, it would improve treatment responses, increase quality of life, and prolong survival. With 50 years of study, the field has focused on defining pathways that promote atrophy in the end-organs most affected my cachexia. While this work has been fruitful, it has not led to identification of the upstream mediators of CC, nor has it generated effective therapies. There is an urgent need for high-quality discovery science and more detailed clinical phenotyping.We have created a virtual institute comprised of diverse, international, multidisciplinary scientists and clinicians with expertise in cancer, metabolism, neuroendocrine function, immunology, human metabolic diseases, preclinical models, and clinical phenotyping. We hypothesize that CC is driven by tumor-intrinsic factors that activate neurohormonal sickness pathways, which then induce anorexia, metabolic dysfunction, and tissue atrophy.