Cancer-associated cachexia is defined as involuntary body weight loss, mainly due to progressive wasting of skeletal muscle and adipose tissue, which negatively affects quality of life, efficacy of tumor treatment and survival of cancer patients. Despite the clinical significance of cancer cachexia, effective approaches in stratifying risk for developing cachexia and therapeutic measures in counteracting it are still lacking. Our cachexia research project uses both established and novel quantitative MRI methods to provide a multi-parametric imaging-based, time-resolved description of cachexia development on multiple target tissues in cancer patients.
Prof. Herzig (Institute for Diabetes and Cancer), Dr. Berriel-Diaz (Institute for Diabetes and Cancer), PD Dr. Braren, Prof. M. Schwaiger (Nuclear Medicine)