It seems quite likely that these positive and negative factors interact with each other to change normal muscle growth. These samples will be grown in their laboratory and checked to discover what effect the various growth factors have on them. They are hoping to discover whether muscle from cancer patients experiencing severe weight loss responds differently to growth factors from normal muscle. If they can discover such a difference, it will demonstrate that there is a fundamental difference in the way that muscle cells survive in cancer and will give an important clue to the nature of that difference. If we could find out exactly how muscle cells change in cancer, it might be possible to design ways to treat or prevent the serious loss of weight which is responsible for so many cancer deaths.
Many cancers cause a severe loss of weight in the person affected.
This cancer-induced weight loss is so serious that one third of cancer deaths are actually caused by it. This type of severe weight loss means that patients lose a large amount of muscle tissue, leaving them too weak to walk or move. We currently have no effective treatments for cancer-induced weight loss. Simply giving the patient more to eat does not work.