Laboratory of Biology of Aging (LABEN), Department of Gerontology, Federal University of São Carlos, São Carlos, Brazil.
J Cachexia Sarcopenia Muscle. 2019 Dec;10(6):1183-1194. doi: 10.1002/jcsm.12475. Epub 2019 Aug 22.
Cancer cachexia is a paraneoplastic syndrome characterized by lean mass wasting (with or without fat mass decrease), culminating in involuntary weight loss, which is the key clinical observation nowadays. There is a notable lack of studies involving animal models to mimic the clinical reality, which are mostly patients with cachexia and metastatic disease. This mismatch between the clinical reality and animal models could at least partly contribute to the poor translation observed in the field. In this paper, we retrieved and compared animal models used for cachexia research from 2017 and 10 years earlier (2007) and observed that very little has changed. Especially, clinically relevant models where cachexia is studied in an orthotopic or metastatic context were and still are very scarce. Finally, we described and supported the biological rationale behind why, despite technical challenges, these two phenomena-metastasis and cachexia-should be modelled in parallel, highlighting the overlapping pathways between them. To sum up, this review aims to contribute to rethinking and possibly switching the models currently used for cachexia research, to hopefully obtain better and more translational outcomes.
癌症恶病质是一种副瘤综合征，其特征为去脂体重（伴有或不伴有脂肪量减少）消耗，最终导致非自愿性体重下降，这是目前的关键临床观察指标。目前，涉及动物模型以模拟临床实际情况的研究明显缺乏，而这些动物模型大多是恶病质和转移性疾病患者。临床实际情况与动物模型之间的这种不匹配至少部分导致了该领域观察到的转化效果不佳。在本文中，我们检索并比较了 2017 年和 10 年前（2007 年）用于恶病质研究的动物模型，观察到几乎没有什么变化。特别是，在原位或转移性背景下研究恶病质的临床相关模型仍然非常稀缺。最后，我们描述并支持了背后的生物学原理，即尽管存在技术挑战，但这两种现象——转移和恶病质——应该并行建模，并强调它们之间重叠的途径。总之，这篇综述旨在重新思考并可能切换当前用于恶病质研究的模型，以期获得更好和更具转化意义的结果。
