Effect of muscle activity on tumor cell growth and survival

Exercise is now recommended in multimodal therapies for cancer patients. The beneficial effects of exercise span from the rescue of muscle homeostasis to the control of inflammation, ultimately resulting in increased survival of tumor bearing animals and patients. A modern vision of the skeletal muscle includes the idea that this highly vascularized organ posses an important paracrine and endocrine activity, which is exercise-dependent. Secreted muscle factors (myokines) affect multiple target tissues. Only recently, a pioneer study showed that the tumor itself can be targeted by myokine-directed NK cells and its growth blunted following muscle stimulation by exercise. Whilst suggested by other studies, it is not clear if muscle cells per se possess a antitumoral activity, nor its dependence by mechanical stimulation. This project aims to demonstrate in vitro that (a) muscle cells secrete factors with anti-tumor activity (by either stopping cell proliferation of inducing cell death) and (b) mechanical stimulation of muscle cells affects their secretome, possibly enriching it in antitumoral factors; in addition, an initial characterization of the products released by muscle cells is proposed, with the aim to start identifying the biochemical nature of these antitumoral factors.