Induced pluripotent stem cells from Huntington's disease patients: a promising approach to define and correct disease-related alterations.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Fatima A
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6375035 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Induced pluripotent stem cells from Huntington's disease patients: a promising approach to define and correct disease-related alterations.
Fatima Azra A Gutiérrez-Garcia Ricardo R Vilchez David D
Neural regeneration research 20190501 5
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Project description:Intra-striatal transplantation of homotypic fetal tissue at the time of peak striatal neurogenesis can provide some functional benefit to patients suffering from Huntington's disease. Currently, the only approach shown to slow down the course of this condition is replacement of the neurons primarily targeted in this disorder, although it has been transient and has only worked with a limited number of patients. Otherwise, this dominantly inherited neurodegenerative disease inevitably results in the progressive decline of motricity, cognition, and behavior, and leads to death within 15 to 20 years of onset. However, fetal neural cell therapy of Huntington's disease, as with a similar approach in Parkinson's disease, is marred with both technical and biological hurdles related to the source of grafting material. This heavily restricts the number of patients who can be treated. A substitute cell source is therefore needed, but must perform at least as well as fetal neural graft in terms of brain recovery and reconstruction, while overcoming its major obstacles. Human pluripotent stem cells (embryonic in origin or induced from adult cells through genetic reprogramming) have the potential to meet those challenges. In this review, the therapeutic potential in view of 4 major issues is identified during fetal cell therapy clinical trials: 1) logistics of graft procurement, 2) quality control of the cell preparation, 3) immunogenicity of the graft, and 4) safety of the procedure.
| S-EPMC3250302 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived from controls and patients can act as a starting point for in vitro differentiation into human brain cells for discovery of novel targets and treatments for human disease without the same ethical limitations posed by embryonic stem cells. Numerous groups have successfully produced and characterized Huntington's disease (HD) iPSCs with different CAG repeat lengths, including cells from patients with one or two HD alleles. HD iPSCs and the neural cell types derived from them recapitulate some disease phenotypes found in both human patients and animal models. Although these discoveries are encouraging, the use of iPSCs for cutting edge and reproducible research has been limited due to some of the inherent problems with cell lines and the technological differences in the way laboratories use them. The goal of this review is to summarize the current state of the HD iPSC field, and to highlight some of the issues that need to be addressed to maximize their potential as research tools.
| S-EPMC4942721 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Huntington's disease (HD) is caused by a CAG expansion in the huntingtin gene. Expansion of the polyglutamine tract in the huntingtin protein results in massive cell death in the striatum of HD patients. We report that human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived from HD patient fibroblasts can be corrected by the replacement of the expanded CAG repeat with a normal repeat using homologous recombination, and that the correction persists in iPSC differentiation into DARPP-32-positive neurons in vitro and in vivo. Further, correction of the HD-iPSCs normalized pathogenic HD signaling pathways (cadherin, TGF-β, BDNF, and caspase activation) and reversed disease phenotypes such as susceptibility to cell death and altered mitochondrial bioenergetics in neural stem cells. The ability to make patient-specific, genetically corrected iPSCs from HD patients will provide relevant disease models in identical genetic backgrounds and is a critical step for the eventual use of these cells in cell replacement therapy.
| S-EPMC3608272 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundHuntington's disease (HD) is an incurable hereditary neurodegenerative disorder, which manifests itself as a loss of GABAergic medium spiny (GABA MS) neurons in the striatum and caused by an expansion of the CAG repeat in exon 1 of the huntingtin gene. There is no cure for HD, existing pharmaceutical can only relieve its symptoms.ResultsHere, induced pluripotent stem cells were established from patients with low CAG repeat expansion in the huntingtin gene, and were then efficiently differentiated into GABA MS-like neurons (GMSLNs) under defined culture conditions. The generated HD GMSLNs recapitulated disease pathology in vitro, as evidenced by mutant huntingtin protein aggregation, increased number of lysosomes/autophagosomes, nuclear indentations, and enhanced neuronal death during cell aging. Moreover, store-operated channel (SOC) currents were detected in the differentiated neurons, and enhanced calcium entry was reproducibly demonstrated in all HD GMSLNs genotypes. Additionally, the quinazoline derivative, EVP4593, reduced the number of lysosomes/autophagosomes and SOC currents in HD GMSLNs and exerted neuroprotective effects during cell aging.ConclusionsOur data is the first to demonstrate the direct link of nuclear morphology and SOC calcium deregulation to mutant huntingtin protein expression in iPSCs-derived neurons with disease-mimetic hallmarks, providing a valuable tool for identification of candidate anti-HD drugs. Our experiments demonstrated that EVP4593 may be a promising anti-HD drug.
| S-EPMC4832474 | biostudies-literature
Project description:UnlabelledThe purpose of this study was to determine the functional recovery of the transplanted induced pluripotent stem cells in a rat model of Huntington's disease with use of 18F-FDG microPET/CT imaging.MethodsIn a quinolinic acid-induced rat model of striatal degeneration, induced pluripotent stem cells were transplanted into the ipsilateral lateral ventricle ten days after the quinolinic acid injection. The response to the treatment was evaluated by serial 18F-FDG PET/CT scans and Morris water maze test. Histological analyses and Western blotting were performed six weeks after stem cell transplantation.ResultsAfter induced pluripotent stem cells transplantation, higher 18F-FDG accumulation in the injured striatum was observed during the 4 to 6-weeks period compared with the quinolinic acid-injected group, suggesting the metabolic recovery of injured striatum. The induced pluripotent stem cells transplantation improved learning and memory function (and striatal atrophy) of the rat in six week in the comparison with the quinolinic acid-treated controls. In addition, immunohistochemical analysis demonstrated that transplanted stem cells survived and migrated into the lesioned area in striatum, and most of the stem cells expressed protein markers of neurons and glial cells.ConclusionOur findings show that induced pluripotent stem cells can survive, differentiate to functional neurons and improve partial striatal function and metabolism after implantation in a rat Huntington's disease model.
| S-EPMC4108311 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundHuntington's disease (HD) is a fatal neurodegenerative autosomal dominant disorder with prevalence of 1 : 20000 that has no effective treatment to date. Translatability of candidate therapeutics could be enhanced by additional testing in large animal models because of similarities in brain anatomy, size, and immunophysiology. These features enable realistic pre-clinical studies of biodistribution, efficacy, and toxicity.Objective and methodsHere we non-invasively characterized alterations in brain white matter microstructure, neurochemistry, neurological status, and mutant Huntingtin protein (mHTT) levels in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of aged OVT73 HD sheep.ResultsSimilar to HD patients, CSF mHTT differentiates HD from normal sheep. Our results are indicative of a decline in neurological status, and alterations in brain white matter diffusion and spectroscopy metric that are more severe in aged female HD sheep. Longitudinal analysis of aged female HD sheep suggests that the decline is detectable over the course of a year. In line with reports of HD human studies, white matter alterations in corpus callosum correlates with a decline in gait of HD sheep. Moreover, alterations in the occipital cortex white matter correlates with a decline in clinical rating score. In addition, the marker of energy metabolism in striatum of aged HD sheep, shows a correlation with decline of clinical rating score and eye coordination.ConclusionThis data suggests that OVT73 HD sheep can serve as a pre-manifest large animal model of HD providing a platform for pre-clinical testing of HD therapeutics and non-invasive tracking of the efficacy of the therapy.
| S-EPMC9837686 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Huntington's disease (HD) is an inherited neurodegenerative disorder caused by an expanded stretch of CAG trinucleotide repeats that results in neuronal dysfunction and death. Here, The HD Consortium reports the generation and characterization of 14 induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines from HD patients and controls. Microarray profiling revealed CAG-repeat-expansion-associated gene expression patterns that distinguish patient lines from controls, and early onset versus late onset HD. Differentiated HD neural cells showed disease-associated changes in electrophysiology, metabolism, cell adhesion, and ultimately cell death for lines with both medium and longer CAG repeat expansions. The longer repeat lines were however the most vulnerable to cellular stressors and BDNF withdrawal, as assessed using a range of assays across consortium laboratories. The HD iPSC collection represents a unique and well-characterized resource to elucidate disease mechanisms in HD and provides a human stem cell platform for screening new candidate therapeutics.
| S-EPMC3804072 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundHuntington's Disease (HD) is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder that clinically manifests as motor dysfunction, cognitive impairment and psychiatric symptoms. There is currently no cure for this progressive and fatal disorder. The causative mutation of this hereditary disease is a trinucleotide repeat expansion (CAG) in the Huntingtin gene that results in an expanded polyglutamine tract. Multiple mechanisms have been proposed to explain the preferential striatal and cortical degeneration that occurs with HD, including non-cell-autonomous contribution from astrocytes. Although numerous cell culture and animal models exist, there is a great need for experimental systems that can more accurately replicate the human disease. Human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are a remarkable new tool to study neurological disorders because this cell type can be derived from patients as a renewable, genetically tractable source for unlimited cells that are difficult to acquire, such as neurons and astrocytes. The development of experimental systems based on iPSC technology could aid in the identification of molecular lesions and therapeutic treatments.ResultsWe derived iPSCs from a father with adult onset HD and 50 CAG repeats (F-HD-iPSC) and his daughter with juvenile HD and 109 CAG repeats (D-HD-iPSC). These disease-specific iPSC lines were characterized by standard assays to assess the quality of iPSC lines and to demonstrate their pluripotency. HD-iPSCs were capable of producing phenotypically normal, functional neurons in vitro and were able to survive and differentiate into neurons in the adult mouse brain in vivo after transplantation. Surprisingly, when HD-iPSCs were directed to differentiate into an astrocytic lineage, we observed the presence of cytoplasmic, electron clear vacuoles in astrocytes from both F-HD-iPSCs and D-HD-iPSCs, which were significantly more pronounced in D-HD-astrocytes. Remarkably, the vacuolation in diseased astrocytes was observed under basal culture conditions without additional stressors and increased over time. Importantly, similar vacuolation phenotype has also been observed in peripheral blood lymphocytes from individuals with HD. Together, these data suggest that vacuolation may be a phenotype associated with HD.ConclusionsWe have generated a unique in vitro system to study HD pathogenesis using patient-specific iPSCs. The astrocytes derived from patient-specific iPSCs exhibit a vacuolation phenotype, a phenomenon previously documented in primary lymphocytes from HD patients. Our studies pave the way for future mechanistic investigations using human iPSCs to model HD and for high-throughput therapeutic screens.
| S-EPMC3506453 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) undergo unlimited self-renewal while maintaining their potential to differentiate into post-mitotic cells with an intact proteome. As such, iPSCs suppress the aggregation of polyQ-expanded huntingtin (HTT), the mutant protein underlying Huntington's disease (HD). Here we show that proteasome activity determines HTT levels, preventing polyQ-expanded aggregation in iPSCs from HD patients (HD-iPSCs). iPSCs exhibit high levels of UBR5, a ubiquitin ligase required for proteasomal degradation of both normal and mutant HTT. Conversely, loss of UBR5 increases HTT levels and triggers polyQ-expanded aggregation in HD-iPSCs. Moreover, UBR5 knockdown hastens polyQ-expanded aggregation and neurotoxicity in invertebrate models. Notably, UBR5 overexpression induces polyubiquitination and degradation of mutant HTT, reducing polyQ-expanded aggregates in HD-cell models. Besides HTT levels, intrinsic enhanced UBR5 expression determines global proteostasis of iPSCs preventing the aggregation of misfolded proteins ensued from normal metabolism. Thus, our findings indicate UBR5 as a modulator of super-vigilant proteostasis of iPSCs.
| S-EPMC6056416 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Huntington's disease (HD) is a dominant neurodegenerative disorder caused by the expansion of glutamine residues in the N-terminal region of the huntingtin (HTT) protein. The disease results in progressive neuronal loss, leading to motor, cognitive, and psychiatric impairment. Here, we report the establishment of neural progenitor cell (NPC) lines derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) of transgenic HD monkeys. Upon differentiation to neurons, HD neural cells develop cellular features of HD, including the formation of nuclear inclusions and oligomeric mutant HTT (mHTT) aggregates, as well as increased apoptosis. These phenotypes are rescued by genetic suppression of HTT and pharmacological treatment, demonstrating the ability of our HD cell model to respond to therapeutic treatment. The development and reversal of HD-associated phenotypes in neural cells from HD monkeys provides a unique nonhuman primate (NHP) model for exploring HD pathogenesis and evaluating therapeutics that could be assessed further in HD monkeys.
| S-EPMC4223707 | biostudies-literature