Vickie Baracos

Biography

My research on the physiology and pathology of cancer-associated wasting of skeletal muscle spans more than 30 years. Key invited reviews and commentary (i.e. Annual Rev Med 2010, Nature Reviews Clin Oncol 2013; 10(2):90-9; J Clinical Oncol 2013; 31(10):1257-8) outline my understanding of the pathophysiology of cachexia and muscle wasting. I was the senior author of the international consensus framework for definition of cancer cachexia (Lancet Oncology 2011; 12:489-95).

Research Interest

clinical research is focused on the underlying causes of muscle wasting in cancer patients: the role of tumor progression (Lieffers JR, et al. Am J Clin Nutr. 2009; 89:1173-9), of specific drugs used in cancer therapy such as sorafenib (Antoun S et al. J Clin Oncol, 2010; 28:1054-60) and of a putative muscle proteolysis-inducing factor (Wieland BM et al Clin Cancer Res. 2007; 13: 4984-92). A significant zone of current research activity concerns measurement of cancer-related muscle wasting using computed tomography. We established crucial capacity to exploit CT images taken for cancer diagnosis and follow-up, to extract data on skeletal muscle loss. Severe muscle depletion (sarcopenia) is independently prognostic for overall survival (Prado CM et al. Lancet Oncol. 2008; 9:629-35; Martin et al. J Clin Oncol 2013, 31(12):1539-47). Furthermore, sarcopenic cancer patients are susceptible to excess toxicity during chemotherapy treatment (Prado CM et al Clin Cancer Res. 2007; 13(11):3264-8 and 2009:15:2920-6), necessitating dose reductions or treatment delays that ultimately may reduce the efficacy of their treatment.