We would like you to meet another one of our AICR funded researchers; Dr Giuseppina Caretti, from the University of Milan in Italy, was awarded £134,790 for a 3 year grant. Many patients with cancer experience loss of weight and muscle wasting, a process known as cachexia. This process cannot be reversed by simply getting the patient to consume more calories and sadly, if the person has cachexia they are much less likely to survive. There are currently no effective treatments against muscle wasting in cancer and this is the focus of Dr Giuseppina Caretti’s AICR grant. She is focussing on a protein called myostatin which is present at high levels in cachexia. Dr Caretti hopes that by blocking myostatin and its effects, she can reverse muscle loss and increase survival time in mice. If successful, she hopes her work could later be tested in patients.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 14:31:21 +0000
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