On the whole, accumulating evidence indicate that most of the components of the muscle proteolytic machinery (calpains, proteasomes, lysosomes) are overexpressed in cancer cachexia, while systems involved in the endogenous control of protein turnover, such as calpastatin and deubiquitylating enzymes (Goll et al., 2003; Wing, 2016) are down-regulated. The gene discussed is CAST; the disease is cancer.