Weill Cornell Medicine
Presentation Abstract
Cachexia from Animal Models to Clinic
Cancer cachexia is a highly prevalent wasting syndrome associated with progressive loss of skeletal muscle (with or without loss of fat mass) that predicts increased chemotherapy toxicity, complications from cancer surgery, and overall mortality. Cachexia occurs commonly in patients with advanced gastrointestinal (GI) and lung cancers where the prevalence is estimated to be 50-80%. Patients are diagnosed with cachexia when body weight drops more than 5% over the prior 6 months or more than 2% over 6 months if their body mass index (BMI) is already low (< 20 kg/m2) or if sarcopenia is present. Cachexia induced weight loss is due to a combination of reduced food intake and hypermetabolism, which arises from elevated energy expenditure, excess catabolism, and inflammation. The therapeutic options for patients with cachexia are extremely limited. For example, the latest clinical guidelines recommend no specific pharmacological interventions as the standard of care and millions of patients per year are left without treatment. Therefore, there is an urgent need for pre-clinical discovery efforts that can be quickly translated into human interventions. We will briefly review the existing pre-clinical models and highlight their utility for translational research.
About Dr. Goncalves
Dr. Marcus DaSilva Goncalves is an Assistant Professor at Weill Cornell Medicine. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. in cell biology and physiology from University of Pennsylvania in 2012, and completed internal medicine and endocrinology training at Weill Cornell Medicine in 2018. During that time, he received postdoctoral training in cancer metabolism and insulin signaling. He has received the Irma T. Hirschl and Monique Weill-Caulier Research Award, the American Society for Clinical Investigation Young Physician-Scientist Award, and is the inaugural Ralph L. Nachman, M.D. Research Scholar at Weill Cornell Medicine. His laboratory is characterizing the wasting syndrome known as cachexia, using genetic mouse models of lung cancer. He also directs a cachexia-focused clinical practice within endocrinology, and is the translational lead investigator of multiple clinical trials testing the effects of specialized dietary patterns (e.g., ketogenic diet), added sugars (e.g., high fructose corn syrup), and anticancer therapies (e.g., PI3K inhibitors) on the tumor and endocrine system of patients with cancer, and those with metabolic syndromes like obesity and diabetes. His work is supported by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the American Association for Cancer Research, the Mark Foundation, and the Cancer Research UK-NCI co-sponsored Cancer Grand Challenges award.
Dr. Goncalves disclosed the following conflict of interest for this workshop: stock in Faeth Therapeutics; consulting for Pfizer, Novartis AG, Faeth Therapeutics, and Scorpion Therapeutics; patents related to PI3K inhibitors.