Article
作者: Prakasha, Priyanka Shiva ; Taborn, Kristin ; Francis, Christopher ; Byrne, Mike ; Kandasamy, Pachamuthu ; Frank-Kamenetsky, Maria ; Upadhyay, Hansini ; Maguire, Abbie ; Jang, Hyun Gyung ; Purcell-Estabrook, Erin ; Yang, Hailin ; Dale, Elena ; Iwamoto, Naoki ; Meena ; Shimizu, Mamoru ; Hu, Xiao Shelley ; Shelke, Juili Dilip ; Yin, Yuan ; Tseng, Wei Chou ; Zhao, Anderson ; Liu, Yuanjing ; Longo, Ken ; Akhtar, Ali ; Metterville, Jake ; Verdine, Gregory L ; Looby, Richard ; Liu, Fangjun ; Kothari, Nayantara ; Lamattina, Anthony ; Pan, Qianli ; Bowman, Keith ; Standley, Stephany ; Vargeese, Chandra
Huntington's disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant disease caused by the expansion of cytosine-adenine-guanine (CAG) repeats in one copy of the HTT gene (mutant HTT, mHTT). The unaffected HTT gene encodes wild-type HTT (wtHTT) protein, which supports processes important for the health and function of the central nervous system. Selective lowering of mHTT for the treatment of HD may provide a benefit over nonselective HTT-lowering approaches, as it aims to preserve the beneficial activities of wtHTT. Targeting a heterozygous single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) where the targeted variant is on the mHTT gene is one strategy for achieving allele-selective activity. Herein, we investigated whether stereopure phosphorothioate (PS)- and phosphoryl guanidine (PN)-containing oligonucleotides can direct allele-selective mHTT lowering by targeting rs362273 (SNP3). We demonstrate that our SNP3-targeting molecules are potent, durable, and selective for mHTT in vitro and in vivo in mouse models. Through comparisons with a surrogate for the nonselective investigational compound tominersen, we also demonstrate that allele-selective molecules display equivalent potency toward mHTT with improved durability while sparing wtHTT. Our preclinical findings support the advancement of WVE-003, an investigational allele-selective compound currently in clinical testing (NCT05032196) for the treatment of patients with HD.