Substitution of cysteine for phenylalanine 751 in mature von Willebrand factor is a novel candidate mutation in a family with type IIA von Willebrand disease.

Type IIA is a variant form of von Willebrand disease (vWD) characterized by the absence of von Willebrand factor (vWF) high molecular weight multimers in plasma. Most of the candidate missense mutations potentially responsible for type IIA vWD have been found clustered within a short segment of vWF, lying between Gly742 and Glu875 of the mature subunit. The present work reports a single heterozygous T-->G transversion in eight patients from a large type IIA vWD family, resulting in the substitution Phe751-->Cys. The absence of this mutation in 100 normal vWF genes as well as the lack, in these patients, of any other abnormality within the whole exon 28 encoding amino acids 463-921 of mature vWF, provide a strong support that this non-conservative mutation may be at the origin of the disease in this family. The presence of an additional cysteine at position 751 may induce a conformational change of the vWF subunit affecting either its 'in vivo' sensitivity to proteolytic cleavage or, more likely, its intracellular transport as suggested by the abnormal multimeric pattern of platelet vWF observed in these patients.