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siRNA screen identifies QPCT as a druggable target for Huntington's disease.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Jimenez-Sanchez, Maria 
Lam, Wun 
Hannus, Michael 
Sönnichsen, Birte 
Imarisio, Sara 

Abstract

Huntington's disease (HD) is a currently incurable neurodegenerative condition caused by an abnormally expanded polyglutamine tract in huntingtin (HTT). We identified new modifiers of mutant HTT toxicity by performing a large-scale 'druggable genome' siRNA screen in human cultured cells, followed by hit validation in Drosophila. We focused on glutaminyl cyclase (QPCT), which had one of the strongest effects on mutant HTT-induced toxicity and aggregation in the cell-based siRNA screen and also rescued these phenotypes in Drosophila. We found that QPCT inhibition induced the levels of the molecular chaperone αB-crystallin and reduced the aggregation of diverse proteins. We generated new QPCT inhibitors using in silico methods followed by in vitro screening, which rescued the HD-related phenotypes in cell, Drosophila and zebrafish HD models. Our data reveal a new HD druggable target affecting mutant HTT aggregation and provide proof of principle for a discovery pipeline from druggable genome screen to drug development.

Description

Keywords

Aminoacyltransferases, Animals, Cells, Cultured, Computational Biology, Drosophila, Drug Evaluation, Preclinical, Enzyme Inhibitors, Green Fluorescent Proteins, Humans, Huntingtin Protein, Huntington Disease, Mice, Mice, Inbred C57BL, Mutation, Nerve Tissue Proteins, Neurons, RNA, Small Interfering, Zebrafish, alpha-Crystallin B Chain

Journal Title

Nat Chem Biol

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1552-4450
1552-4469

Volume Title

11

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
Wellcome Trust (095317/Z/11/Z)
Medical Research Council (MR/J006904/1)
Wellcome Trust (100140/Z/12/Z)
Wellcome Trust (095317/Z/11/A)
European Commission (305121)