1 UCL Institute of Neurology, Department of Neurodegenerative Disease, London, UK.
Brain. 2014 Mar;137(Pt 3):819-33. doi: 10.1093/brain/awt355. Epub 2014 Jan 22.
Huntington's disease is an inherited neurodegenerative disorder caused by a CAG repeat expansion in the huntingtin gene. The peripheral innate immune system contributes to Huntington's disease pathogenesis and has been targeted successfully to modulate disease progression, but mechanistic understanding relating this to mutant huntingtin expression in immune cells has been lacking. Here we demonstrate that human Huntington's disease myeloid cells produce excessive inflammatory cytokines as a result of the cell-intrinsic effects of mutant huntingtin expression. A direct effect of mutant huntingtin on the NFκB pathway, whereby it interacts with IKKγ, leads to increased degradation of IκB and subsequent nuclear translocation of RelA. Transcriptional alterations in intracellular immune signalling pathways are also observed. Using a novel method of small interfering RNA delivery to lower huntingtin expression, we show reversal of disease-associated alterations in cellular function-the first time this has been demonstrated in primary human cells. Glucan-encapsulated small interfering RNA particles were used to lower huntingtin levels in human Huntington's disease monocytes/macrophages, resulting in a reversal of huntingtin-induced elevated cytokine production and transcriptional changes. These findings improve our understanding of the role of innate immunity in neurodegeneration, introduce glucan-encapsulated small interfering RNA particles as tool for studying cellular pathogenesis ex vivo in human cells and raise the prospect of immune cell-directed HTT-lowering as a therapeutic in Huntington's disease.
亨廷顿病是一种遗传性神经退行性疾病,由亨廷顿基因中的 CAG 重复扩展引起。外周固有免疫系统有助于亨廷顿病的发病机制,并已成功靶向以调节疾病进展,但与免疫细胞中突变亨廷顿蛋白表达相关的机制理解一直缺乏。在这里,我们证明人类亨廷顿病髓样细胞由于突变亨廷顿蛋白表达的细胞内在效应而产生过多的炎症细胞因子。突变亨廷顿蛋白对 NFκB 途径的直接影响,即它与 IKKγ 相互作用,导致 IκB 的降解增加,随后 RelA 核易位。还观察到细胞内免疫信号通路的转录改变。使用一种新的小干扰 RNA 递送来降低亨廷顿表达的方法,我们显示出细胞功能的疾病相关改变得到逆转——这是在原代人类细胞中首次证明。葡聚糖包封的小干扰 RNA 颗粒用于降低人类亨廷顿病单核细胞/巨噬细胞中的亨廷顿蛋白水平,导致亨廷顿诱导的细胞因子产生和转录变化升高得到逆转。这些发现提高了我们对固有免疫在神经退行性变中的作用的理解,引入了葡聚糖包封的小干扰 RNA 颗粒作为在人类细胞中体外研究细胞发病机制的工具,并提出了针对免疫细胞的 HTT 降低作为亨廷顿病治疗的前景。