Skeletal muscle protein synthesis is mainly promoted by the PI3K-Akt-mTOR pathway and cachexia patients with pancreatic carcinoma or lung cancer demonstrated an altered PI3K-Akt-mTOR signaling (Schmitt et al., 2007; Murton et al., 2017), a result also found in various pre-clinical models (White et al., 2011; Padrão et al., 2013; Gallot et al., 2014; Puppa et al., 2014; Bohnert et al., 2016; Chen M. C. et al., 2016; de Lima Junior et al., 2016; Sun et al., 2016; Chacon-Cabrera et al., 2017; Quan-Jun et al., 2017; Nissinen et al., 2018; Salazar-Degracia et al., 2018). The gene discussed is MTOR; the disease is exocrine pancreatic carcinoma.