Liver amino acid metabolism in wasting disorders

Some metabolic enzymes are upregulated in the liver of mice and humans with wasting disorders. Here we will test whether and how these enzymes impact on metabolic health via excess catabolism. We will use mouse models of wasting metabolism (i.e. cancer cachexia, severe diabetes, nutreint restriction) and affect the activity of the specific metabolic enzymes via adeno-associated virus transduction. We will also conduct state-of-the-art metabolic and biometric phenotyping. With these tools we aim to discover a novel drugable pathway to relieve metabolic dysfunction in diabetes and wasting diseases such as fasting/starvation, chronic infection and cancer cachexia.