Janas Maja M, Schlegel Mark K, Harbison Carole E, Yilmaz Vedat O, Jiang Yongfeng, Parmar Rubina, Zlatev Ivan, Castoreno Adam, Xu Huilei, Shulga-Morskaya Svetlana, Rajeev Kallanthottathil G, Manoharan Muthiah, Keirstead Natalie D, Maier Martin A, Jadhav Vasant
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, 300 Third Street, Cambridge, MA, 02142, USA.
Nat Commun. 2018 Feb 19;9(1):723. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-02989-4.
Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) conjugated to a trivalent N-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc) ligand are being evaluated in investigational clinical studies for a variety of indications. The typical development candidate selection process includes evaluation of the most active compounds for toxicity in rats at pharmacologically exaggerated doses. The subset of GalNAc-siRNAs that show rat hepatotoxicity is not advanced to clinical development. Potential mechanisms of hepatotoxicity can be associated with the intracellular accumulation of oligonucleotides and their metabolites, RNA interference (RNAi)-mediated hybridization-based off-target effects, and/or perturbation of endogenous RNAi pathways. Here we show that rodent hepatotoxicity observed at supratherapeutic exposures can be largely attributed to RNAi-mediated off-target effects, but not chemical modifications or the perturbation of RNAi pathways. Furthermore, these off-target effects can be mitigated by modulating seed-pairing using a thermally destabilizing chemical modification, which significantly improves the safety profile of a GalNAc-siRNA in rat and may minimize the occurrence of hepatotoxic siRNAs across species.
与三价N-乙酰半乳糖胺(GalNAc)配体缀合的小干扰RNA(siRNA)正在针对多种适应症进行临床研究评估。典型的研发候选药物筛选过程包括在药理学上的超剂量下评估大鼠中最具活性化合物的毒性。显示大鼠肝毒性的GalNAc-siRNA子集不会进入临床开发阶段。肝毒性的潜在机制可能与寡核苷酸及其代谢产物的细胞内积累、基于RNA干扰(RNAi)介导的杂交脱靶效应和/或内源性RNAi途径的扰动有关。在这里,我们表明在超治疗剂量下观察到的啮齿动物肝毒性在很大程度上可归因于RNAi介导的脱靶效应,而不是化学修饰或RNAi途径的扰动。此外,通过使用热不稳定化学修饰调节种子配对可以减轻这些脱靶效应,这显著改善了GalNAc-siRNA在大鼠中的安全性,并可能使跨物种肝毒性siRNA的发生率降至最低。