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Dietary supplementation with ursolic acid preserves skeletal muscle mass and strength in mouse models of cancer cachexia [RNA-seq]

GSE325158 Mus musculus (mouse) RNA-seq (gene expression) 12 samples Submitted 2026/05/05 Platform GPL13112
At a glance

RNA-seq (gene expression) · mouse · 12 samples

What it is
RNA-seq (gene expression)Gene activity measured by sequencing. The summary does not mention single-cell work, so this is most likely bulk: one average per sample, the usual starting point for comparing groups.
Organism
Mus musculus (mouse)
Samples
12 samples: 4 × Tibialis anterior muscle, Sham, non-tumor bearing, vs 4 × Tibialis anterior muscle, KPC tumor-bearing, vs 4 × Tibialis anterior muscle, KPC tumor-bearing + ursolic acid,Groups are read from the sample names, not from the paper. Check the list below.
Data you can get
A processed table (series matrix) and supplementary files from NCBI; the raw sequencing reads from ENA. Which of these hold counts depends on the study, so check the file list.
Paper
Dietary supplementation with ursolic acid preserves skeletal muscle mass and strength in mouse models of cancer cachexiaAmerican journal of physiology. Cell physiology · 2026
Summary (written by the submitters)
Skeletal muscle atrophy is a devastating and defining feature of cancer cachexia that reduces quality of life, treatment tolerance, and survival, but cannot be prevented or reversed by current management strategies. Ursolic acid is a natural dietary compound that has been shown to inhibit atrophy-associated changes in skeletal muscle mRNA expression in rodents and dogs, leading to beneficial changes in skeletal muscle structure and function.
Read the full summary ↓
We hypothesized that dietary supplementation with ursolic acid might help support skeletal muscle mass and function during cancer. To test this hypothesis, we investigated ursolic acid's effects in five in vivo mouse models of cancer cachexia that are driven by pancreatic, colon, and lung cancer cells of mouse and human origin. We found that dietary supplementation with ursolic acid has broad-spectrum effects towards cancer-induced skeletal muscle atrophy, significantly preserving muscle mass in all five cancer cachexia models. Ursolic acid's positive effects on muscle mass and muscle fiber size led to significant improvements in grip strength and muscle tetanic force, persisted in the presence of chemotherapy, and were not associated with discernable changes in food intake or tumor growth. Ursolic acid appeared to generate its beneficial effects in skeletal muscle by acting directly on muscle cells, inhibiting catabolic effects of tumor-derived secreted factors, and inhibiting > 90% of cancer-induced changes in skeletal muscle mRNA expression. These results strongly nominate ursolic acid as a promising potential nutritional approach for supporting muscle mass and function in individuals with cancer.
Published in
Dietary supplementation with ursolic acid preserves skeletal muscle mass and strength in mouse models of cancer cachexia
Ducharme JB, Ebert SM, Cameron ME et al. · American journal of physiology. Cell physiology 2026 · PMID 42117587 · doi:10.1152/ajpcell.00159.2026
This dataset
Download · which file do I need?

Direct links to NCBI and ENA, no account and no request form. Pick by what you want to do: take the small processed table to look, the supplementary files to re-analyse, or the original raw data to start over.

1 · Just have a look

Processed table

The series matrix: one table of values per sample as the submitters processed it. The smallest download, and it opens in Excel or R. Start here to see what the data look like.

2 · Re-analyse it

Supplementary files

The count tables and other files the authors uploaded. Take only the samples you need, or the whole study as GSE325158_RAW.tar (it can run to tens of gigabytes).

3 · Start from the raw reads

Raw sequencing reads

The original FASTQ files, straight from the sequencer, held at ENA. Large, and you align them yourself, so only choose this if you need to re-process the study from scratch.

What the files usually look like: For RNA-seq the counts are usually a table among the supplementary files (look for 'counts', 'expression', 'FPKM' or 'TPM' in the file name). The series matrix of a sequencing study is sometimes nearly empty.

Also filed as BioProject PRJNA1438730 and SRA study SRP684551. Searching any of these in the dataset finder brings you back here.

Study design
4 × Tibialis anterior muscle, Sham, non-tumor bearing, vs 4 × Tibialis anterior muscle, KPC tumor-bearing, vs 4 × Tibialis anterior muscle, KPC tumor-bearing + ursolic acid,

Supports a between-group comparison across 12 samples.

How we read this: 3 replicated groups read from 12 sample titles; they account for 12 of them. These groups are guessed from the sample names, not taken from the paper, so check them against the sample list below before relying on them.

Samples in this study
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