Taken together, even though most studies on the mechanisms of cancer-induced cachexia and muscle wasting have relied on mammalian models with transplanted tumors, recent studies in Drosophila have revealed similarities between flies and cancer patients, particularly at the level of systemic insulin signaling changes modulated by tumor-derived ImpL2 (Figueroa-Clarevega and Bilder, 2015; Kwon et al., 2015; Lodge et al., 2021) or IGFBP2 in cancer patients (Dong et al., 2021). The gene discussed is IGFBP2; the disease is cancer.