Cancer cachexia

Understanding and Addressing Cancer Cachexia (of: Transforming Cancer Cachexia Research: From Patient Insights to Personalized Care)

Cancer cachexia is a serious syndrome impacting most cancer patients. It is characterized by severe weight loss due to muscle wasting and loss of fat tissue. This condition is driven by a complex interplay of factors, including inflammation, disruptions in protein, glucose, and lipid metabolism, reduced appetite, malabsorption, and neuro-endocrine changes. The development and progression of cachexia in cancer patients is a direct cause of death, with mortality rates as high as 80%.

Early detection and intervention are crucial. Our team utilizes routine preoperative diagnostics -such as abdominal CT scans and blood tests- to assess body composition, nutritional status, physical fitness, and inflammation. Key indicators like elevated C-reactive protein levels, increased fat content in skeletal muscle (myosteatosis), and reduced oxygen consumption are among the strongest predictors of poor overall survival in these patients.

Because cancer cachexia presents with a wide range of symptoms and severities, a one-size-fits-all approach is not effective. Our work focuses on personalized, multimodal treatment strategies that may include nutritional support, anti-inflammatory medication or immunonutrition, and tailored exercise programs. Such a comprehensive approach aims to address the unique needs of each patient, ultimately improving quality of life and survival outcomes. Through this combination of patient-driven research and technological innovation, we are redefining how cancer cachexia is studied and managed.

We consider it very important to communicate our data and insights to fellow researchers and to the broader community. We partner with several patient advocate organizations to ensure the inclusion of patient opinions in our research projects, thereby adding relevance to our work. We organize workshops for scientists and events where the broader public can visit our labs to enhance our impact and the general awareness of the consequences of body weight loss for cancer patients. Our educational activities include contributions to textbooks on the cachexia syndrome in pancreatic cancer as well as teaching Biomedicine and Medicine students. We are actively working on implementation of our findings in the patient care paths of the Maastricht Comprehensive Cancer Centre.

Our research activities are picked up by regional and national newspapers and magazines, allowing us to create awareness of the detrimental impact of cancer cachexia on the patient’s treatment outcome and quality of life. In addition, we are active in the valorisation of our research insights. We were among the founding members of Adjutec, a start-up that focused on the development of a novel anti-cancer vaccination platform with an innovative adjuvant that promotes strong immune responses to patient-specific tumour targets.