It is now well established that systemic inflammation is a key driver of cancer cachexia, through circulating molecules released by immune cells that have direct effects on skeletal muscle (Baracos et al., 2018), and through the induction of other systemic disruptions that can in turn modulate skeletal muscle mass, such as the control of central nervous system, appetite, energy intake and expenditure, insulin resistance and hypogonadism (Laird and Fallon, 2017; Wu and Ballantyne, 2017; Baracos et al., 2018). The gene discussed is INS; the disease is cancer.