Denis Guttridge, Phd

Cac Patients with cancer suffer from weight loss. This loss is due to the loss in skeletal muscle. Patients with cancer are vulnerable to muscle loss. Patients with muscle loss also respond poorly to their treatment which lowers their survival. There is no cure for muscle loss in cancer. Therefore, understanding the causes of muscle loss may lead to new therapies. Our laboratory studies how cancer promotes muscle loss. In this proposal, we identify an inflammatory factor. Our goal is to determine how this factor causes muscle loss. Importantly, this same factor also promotes cancer. Thus, our studies might understand how this factor functions in both cancer and muscle loss.