Sex-divergent skeletal muscle remodelling emerges early in cancer cachexia
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ABSTRACT: Cancer cachexia is often studied after overt weight and muscle loss are established, limiting insight into early initiating mechanisms and sex-dependent trajectories. This dataset profiles pre-cachectic skeletal muscle transcriptional remodelling in a stage-resolved Colon-26 (C26) model in male and female BALB/c mice. Tibialis anterior muscle was collected at the pre-cachectic stage (tumour palpable, prior to overt hindlimb muscle mass loss) from tumour-bearing mice and sex-matched sham controls (n=4/group; 16 samples total). Poly(A)-selected stranded bulk RNA sequencing (150 bp paired-end; Illumina NovaSeq X Plus) was performed to identify early tumour-associated gene expression changes and sexually dimorphic responses. Reads were aligned to the Mus musculus reference genome (mm39/GRCm39) and gene-level counts were generated for differential expression analysis. Differential expression was assessed using edgeR with TMM normalisation and false discovery rate (FDR) < 0.05. The dataset reveals extensive pre-cachectic transcriptional reprogramming with strong sex specificity, including early regulation of proteostasis, innate immune, extracellular matrix, and metabolic/insulin-related pathways. This resource supports interrogation of early, sex-divergent skeletal muscle adaptations during cachexia initiation and identification of candidate biomarkers and therapeutic targets before overt wasting is established.
ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus
PROVIDER: GSE330085 | GEO | 2026/08/24
REPOSITORIES: GEO
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