Huntingtin is a type of protein found inside our cells. It is important for normal brain function. However, when there is a mutation in the gene that makes the
huntingtin protein, it can cause a genetic disorder called Huntington's disease. This disease affects the brain and can lead to problems with movement, cognition, and behavior.
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Clumps of mutant
huntingtin protein in brain cells are a hallmark of HD, and they build up slowly, occupying more and more cells over time.
Regular mice injected with glial cells carrying the mutant
huntingtin gene in the study developed symptoms associated with HD.
We simply measure levels
of huntingtin protein in the cerebrospinal fluid before and after drug treatment.
We know that lowering the level of
mutant huntingtin protein in HD mouse models significantly improves symptoms reminiscent of HD, providing hope that similar treatments in people may be effective.
Repeating glutamines, called polyglutamines, are normal
in huntingtin proteins, but when the DNA is copied incorrectly, the repeating sequence of glutamines can become too long.
The researchers introduced this extra gene, designed to be regulated in a way that is similar to
normal huntingtin genes, by injecting rhesus macaque oocytes with a viral vector.
This is encouraging given that these areas are the main focus
for huntingtin lowering drugs in clinical trials.
Meanwhile, everyone in HD remains excited about the ongoing efforts round the world to lower
huntingtin levels by targeting the RNA.
Huntington's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized
by huntingtin protein aggregates in a patient's brain, but how these aggregates form is not well understood.
First off, all of this new research on the role of the helper complex and mTOR in making
extra-long huntingtin protein was done in cells or mice.
Dominant - Negative Effects of Adult - Onset
Huntingtin Mutations Alter the Division of Human Embryonic Stem Cells - Derived Neural Cells.
But in mice engineered to carry an
expanded huntingtin gene, the first non-coding region was not removed properly.
It's difficult to determine the exact cause of the neurological problems that arose
when huntingtin was removed in mice, but the researchers uncovered some interesting clues.
In cell - free assays, CRMP1 slows the spontaneous self - assembly of
huntingtin fragments with glutamine expansions.
Children with a parent who has the disease have a 50 percent chance of inheriting the
mutated huntingtin gene that causes it.
«A long - standing mystery among researchers was how the buildup of this mutant
huntingtin caused cells to degrade and die, but previous technology made it virtually impossible to monitor this process at the cellular level.
This has been a major hurdle for HD researchers, but we now have a super-sensitive method to measure the build - up of
harmful huntingtin protein in the nervous systems of HD patients.
To do this, a group of researchers recently used genetic techniques to
remove huntingtin from adult mice of different ages, then studied their brains and behavior until old age.
The second includes updates
on Huntingtin Lowering Trials from both Wave Life Sciences and Ionis Pharmaceuticals.
In numerous animal trials, using a wide range of these silencing tools, when researchers shut down the
abnormal huntingtin gene, animal models of HD get better, or never get sick in the first place.
It's not clear exactly
how huntingtin helps with the efficient use of iron in the thalamus.
In a nonhuman primate model geneticist Anthony Chan DVM, PhD, and his colleagues at Yerkes developed, rhesus macaques carry a gene encoding a fragment of mutant
human huntingtin.
Mochly - Rosen and colleagues identified several other potential biomarkers that were elevated in HD model mice, including the levels of 8 - hydroxy - deoxy - guanosine, a product of oxidative DNA damage, in the urine and the presence of mutant
huntingtin aggregates and oxidative damage in muscle and skin cells.
Because the helper complex makes translation more efficient, the result of this interaction was that the cells made more extra-length than normal -
length huntingtin protein.
So far, there are promising reports on the short - term safety of
reducing huntingtin levels in adult humans.
So far, most attempts to lower
huntingtin production have focused on the RNA message molecule, because it's easier to design drugs that target RNA than DNA.
This abnormal binding causes more VCP accumulation on the mitochondria,» Nerve cells with VCP - mutant
huntingtin interacting inside them became dysfunctional and self - destructed.
Ionis» trial, led in partnership with Prof Sarah Tabrizi of University College London, was the first time a
targeted huntingtin - lowering drug had been tested in humans.
That means a healthy parent
whose huntingtin gene encodes proteins with 35 repeats may produce a child with 36 repeats.
As expected, they found that the normal and extra-long genetic instructions were both translated
into huntingtin proteins when they met up with a ribosome (the chef from our analogy above).
Nonetheless, the Dragatsis team used this method to try and understand the extreme case of loss of
huntingtin during adulthood.
However, we're excited and optimistic
about huntingtin lowering treatments, and WAVE's latest refinement looks like it could be a an exciting advance.
Spontaneous expansion of the CAG repeat stretch in the CAG 140 KI mouse model, which carries a chimeric mouse / human exon 1 containing around 125 CAG repeats and the human polyproline region inserted in the
murine huntingtin gene (Menalled et al., 2003, Hickey et al., 2008), has recently led to a new KI line that carries around 190 CAG repeats (CAG 190 KI) in a congenic C57Bl / 6J background.
According to Qi, «In Huntington's disease, the VCP - mutant
huntingtin binding is greatly increased.
Yuan's team exposed human brain cells to Congo red between 6 and 48 hours after they began
producing huntingtin.
Ionis has built a sort of model that enables them to make predictions about the relationship
between huntingtin lowering in the spinal fluid and in brain tissues.
The strategy of lowering
huntingtin expression is widely believed to be promising in treating Huntington's disease, Li says.
The VCP inside mitochondria only interacted with mutant, but not
healthy huntingtin protein.
Huntington disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disease caused by an expanded CAG trinucleotide repeat in the first exon of the HD gene, which results in a toxic polyglutamine stretch
within huntingtin, the protein it encodes.
In the Phase 1 / 2a study, dose - dependent reductions of
muntant huntingtin were observed among patients treated with IONIS - HTTRx
What
if huntingtin is around for half a lifetime, and then is suddenly eliminated?
Wild -
type huntingtin participates in protein trafficking between the Golgi and the extracellular space.
Researchers have now discovered a message in the backup copy of the Huntington's disease gene, which appears to be able to influence how
much huntingtin protein is made.
And when they tracked the striatal neurons carrying the mutant
huntingtin over time, they found them much more likely to die than those from other brain regions.
Phrases with «huntingtin»