Cancer Cachexia Effect on Cardiac Muscle Structure/Function

Most cancer patients suffer from a complex metabolic wasting disease known as cancer cachexia, especially at advanced stages of certain cancers, including colon cancer. Muscle wasting, cardiac remodeling, and cardiac dysfunction are the main symptoms that patients with cancer-induced cardiac cachexia suffer from, ultimately leading to heart failure and death in most patients. There has not been much research done on the correlation between colon cancer-induced cachexia and cardiac muscle. The objective of this project is to determine the effect of colon cancer-induced cachexia on cardiac muscle structure. In this work it was hypothesized that colon-cancer cachexia induced cells differ in structure to normal cardiac muscle cells. To test this hypothesis, H9c2 cells cultured and differentiated in the absence of serum were treated with the conditioned media of CT26 (cachectic) and MC38 (non-cachectic) cell lines. The data indicated that CT26 resulted in increased H9c2 cells detachment compared to MC38 cells. In addition, cellular morphology of H9c2 cells was strikingly different when they were cultured in CT26 and MC38 conditioned media. Collectively, the results validate the hypothesis and suggest that cardiac muscle cells, as modeled by H9c2 cells, are negatively impacted by colon cancer-induced cachexia. My ongoing research in ApcMin/+ mice will investigate the colon cancer-induced cardiac cachexia in vivo in the mouse heart.