Metabolic derangements of skeletal muscle from a murine model of glioma cachexia

BACKGROUND: Cachexia is a complex metabolic disorder and muscle atrophy syndrome, impacting 80% patients with advanced cancers. Malignant glioma is considered to be one of the deadliest human cancers, accounting for about 60% of all primary brain tumors. However, cachexia symptoms induced by glioma have received little attention. This work aims to explore skeletal muscle atrophy in orthotopic glioma murine models. METHODS: BALB/c nude mice were orthotopicly implanted with normal glial (HEB) and glioma (WHO II CHG5 and WHO IV U87) cells. Cachexia symptoms of mice were depicted by phenotypic, histopathologic, physiological, and biochemical analyses. Muscle atrophy-related proteins were examined by western blot, and the involved signaling pathways were analyzed. NMR-based metabolomic analysis was applied to profile metabolic derangements in the skeletal muscle, including multivariate statistical analysis, characteristic metabolite identification, and metabolic pathway analysis. RESULTS: Compared with controls, mice implanted with glioma cells exhibit typical cachexia symptoms, indicating a high correlation with the malignant grades of glioma. U87 mice develop cachexia much earlier and more severe than CHG5 mice. The glioma-bearing mice showed significantly decreased skeletal muscle mass and strength, which were associated with suppressed AKT, activated AMPK, FOXO, Atrogin1, and LC3. Interestingly, expressions of MuRF1, MyoD1, and eIF3f were not significantly changed. Consistently, metabolomic analyses elucidate pronounced metabolic derangements in cachectic gastrocnemius relative to controls. Glucose, glycerol, and 3-hydroxybutyrate were remarkably downregulated, whereas glutamate, arginine, leucine, and isoleucine were upregulated in cachectic gastrocnemius. Furthermore, U87 mice showed more characteristic metabolites and more disturbed metabolic pathways including glucose and lipid metabolism, protein catabolism, anabolism, and citric acid cycle anaplerotic. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates for the first time that the orthotopic glioma murine model developed here exhibits high fidelity of cachexia manifestations in two malignant grades of glioma. Signaling pathway analysis in combination with metabolomic analysis provides significant insights into the complex pathophysiology of glioma cachexia and expands understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying muscle atrophy. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13395-018-0188-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.