Animal models for cancer cachexia

Cancer cachexia is a frequent syndrome that affects patient quality of life, anticancer treatment effectiveness, and overall survival. The lack of anticancer cachexia therapies likely relies on the complexity of the syndrome that renders difficult to design appropriate clinical trials and, conversely, on the insufficient knowledge of the underlying pathogenetic mechanisms. The aim of this review is to collect the most relevant latest information regarding cancer cachexia with a special focus on the experimental systems adopted for modeling the disease in translational studies.

The scenario of preclinical models for the study of cancer cachexia is not static and is rapidly evolving in parallel with new prospective treatment options. The well established syngeneic models using rodent cancer cells injected ectopically are now used alongside new ones featuring orthotopic injection, human cancer cell or patient-derived xenograft, or spontaneous tumors in genetically engineered mice.

The use of more complex animal models that better resemble cancer cachexia, ideally including also the administration of chemotherapy, will expand the understanding of the underlying mechanisms and will allow a more reliable evaluation of prospective drugs for translational purposes.