Preclinical evaluation of CRISPR-based therapies for Noonan syndrome caused by deep-intronic LZTR1 variants
Summary
Gene variants in LZTR1 are implicated to cause Noonan syndrome associated with a severe and early-onset hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Mechanistically, LZTR1 deficiency results in accumulation of RAS GTPases and, as a consequence, in RAS-MAPK signaling hyperactivity, thereby causing the Noonan syndrome-associated phenotype. Despite its epidemiological relevance, pharmacological as well as invasive therapies remain limited. Here, personalized CRISPR-Cas9 gene therapies might offer a novel alternative for a curative treatment in this patient cohort. In this study, by utilizing a patient-specific screening platform based on iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes from two Noonan syndrome patients, we evaluated different clinically translatable therapeutic approaches using small Cas9 orthologs targeting a deep-intronic LZTR1 variant to cure the disease-associated molecular pathology. Despite high editing efficiencies in cardiomyocyte cultures transduced with lentivirus or all-in-one adeno-associated viruses, we observed crucial differences in editing outcomes in proliferative iPSCs vs. non-proliferative cardiomyocytes. While editing in iPSCs rescued the phenotype, the same editing approaches did not robustly restore LZTR1 function in cardiomyocytes, indicating critical differences in the activity of DNA double-strand break repair mechanisms between proliferative and non-proliferative cell types and highlighting the importance of cell type-specific screens for testing CRISPR-Cas9 gene therapies. © 2024 The Author(s).
| Authors | Knauer C, Haltern H, Schoger E, Kügler S, Roos L, Zelarayán LC, Hasenfuss G, Zimmermann WH, Wollnik B, Cyganek L |
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| Journal | Molecular therapy. Nucleic acids |
| Publication Date | 2024 Mar 12;35(1):102123 |
| PubMed | 38333672 |
| PubMed Central | PMC10851011 |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.omtn.2024.102123 |