Project description
Treating cancer-associated cachexia
A significant proportion of cancer patients suffer from cancer-associated cachexia (CAC) that leads to weight loss, muscle wasting, and reduced well-being. Although there are no reliable biomarkers or treatments for CAC, recent evidence indicates the emergence of metabolic changes in the liver prior to CAC onset. These changes are linked to immune cell infiltration and depletion of the hepatocyte nuclear factor 4 alpha (HNF4a) in the liver. Restoration of HNF4a levels alleviates CAC in mouse models, suggesting it may work as a CAC treatment. Funded by the European Research Council, the CACure project aims to develop liver-specific delivery systems for HNF4a mRNA and combat CAC in patients with pancreatic cancer.
Objective
"Cancer-associated cachexia (CAC) is a multifactorial syndrome causing significant morbidity and mortality in cancer patients and indicates a poor prognosis. Nearly 80% of cancer patients experience CAC, which directly accounts for almost 20% of all cancer deaths, mainly in patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Clinically, CAC manifests as weight loss and wasting of skeletal muscle mass. Thus, CAC patients experience reduced physical, emotional, and social well-being, leading to increased use of healthcare resources. The massive phenotypic manifestations point to a significant imbalance in the systemic metabolism of CAC patients. Unlike starvation, CAC cannot be reversed by standard nutritional interventions, and currently, there are no biomarkers for identifying patients at risk for CAC and no effective therapeutic modalities.
With our ERC (#818943), we identified changes in liver metabolism during extra hepatic carcinogenesis. We now demonstrate that these metabolic changes occur early, precede CAC, and can be diagnosed by routine liver biochemical profile. We generated a biochemical liver score that can identify PDAC patients at risk for CAC, irrespective of disease stage at diagnosis. Furthermore, we find that these metabolic changes in the liver are mediated by early infiltrating immune cells that lead to HNF4a depletion in hepatocytes independent of liver metastasis. Importantly, we find that re-expressing HNF4a with Adeno Associated Virus (AAV8) preserves liver metabolism in PDAC mouse models and alleviates CAC. We hence hypothesize that generating liver-specific mRNA of HNF4a will be highly therapeutically beneficial for PDAC patients identified by our liver score to be at risk for CAC. In this PoC we will generate and test the efficiency of novel HNF4a-mRNA-LNPs in preventing or alleviating CAC in PDAC mouse models. When successful, our optimized construct will undoubtedly serve identified PDAC and other cancer patients at risk for CAC.
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Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Programme(s)
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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HORIZON-ERC-POC - HORIZON ERC Proof of Concept Grants
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2022-POC2
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7610001 Rehovot
Israel
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