Elevated levels of TNF-α precede the onset of cancer-related skeletal muscle degeneration and act through several cancer-related signaling pathways such as the p53 and nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) pathways (Guttridge et al., 2000;Cai et al., 2004;Schwarzkopf et al., 2006). The gene discussed is NFKB1; the disease is cancer.