Focus Research on Muscle Mass and Less on Drugs

Richard DiVenuto from Balmville, New York has extensive experience in finance. In recent years, Richard DiVenuto has worked at a biotech companies that researches the use of stem cells to cure cancer.

With many pharmaceutical companies searching for the cure for cancer, a few researchers have found that part of the answer is not another drug, but instead, related to a protein found in muscle mass.

A few years ago, researchers made the connection between higher muscle mass and the likelihood that a person would recover from the disease. The protein from which the targeted chemical is derived is myostatin. Researchers found that this substance, Fortetropin is associated with increased muscle mass in people and has a proportional relationship between muscle mass and the incidence of disease.

In another study, researchers made the connection between reduced muscle mass and the cancer survival rate. Because of therapies used to aggressively attack cancer, patients typically lose a lot of weight, including muscle. Another study published in Current Opinion in Supportive and Palliative Care found that there was an association between low muscle mass and the ability to survive cancer. Ultimately, as a part of research toward finding a cure for cancer, an approach that focuses on muscle mass as opposed to drugs might be a more proactive approach to finding a cure.