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Regulation of Amino Acids in Muscle and Blood from Patients with Pancreatic Cancer‐ Induced Cachexia
Author(s) -
Talbert Erin E.,
Chakedis Jeffery,
Guttridge Denis C.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.2018.32.1_supplement.856.11
Subject(s) - cachexia , pancreatic cancer , medicine , cancer , weight loss , biomarker , gastroenterology , endocrinology , oncology , bioinformatics , obesity , biology , biochemistry
Cachexia, or weight loss, is a profound side effect of cancer. Patients that suffer from cachexia have poor treatment tolerance, poor post‐surgical outcomes, poor survival, and poor quality of life. Despite decades of research, we lack a pharmacological intervention to treat cachexia, as mechanisms driving cachexia remain incompletely understood. Further, while the significance of cancer cachexia is clear, this syndrome remains poorly recognized, and a biomarker of cancer cachexia would be a valuable tool to improve the recognition of this syndrome. Because cachexia is ultimately a metabolic syndrome, we hypothesized that a metabolomics approach could identify new potential mechanisms of cachexia while also identifying potential biomarkers. Using a targeted mass spectrometry approach, we sought to distinguish cachectic pancreatic cancer patients from those without cancer or weight stable pancreatic cancer patients. Surprisingly, amino acid content of muscle from both cachectic and weight stable cancer patients was pronouncedly decreased compared to control patients. Similarly, plasma amino acid content was also generally decreased in both weight stable and cachectic cancer patients. Only differential levels of gamma‐amino‐N‐butryic acid (GABA) distinguished cachectic cancer patients from weight stable cancer patients and controls. In summary, the majority of changes we detected were specific to pancreatic cancer rather than cachexia, emphasizing the need to include cancer patients with and without cachexia in the study design. Support or Funding Information Support was provided through a Pilot and Feasibility Grant from the Mayo Clinic Metabolomics Resource Core through grant number U24DK100469 from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Additional funding was provided by NIH R01CA180057 (DCG) and American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship PF‐15‐156‐01‐CSM (EET). This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .