MECP2

“Mini-brains” model an autism spectrum disorder and help test treatments

/ Yimy Villa / 4 Comments
Alysson Muotri, PhD, professor and director of the Stem Cell Program at UC San Diego School of Medicine
and member of the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine.
Image credit: UC San Diego Health

Rett syndrome is a rare form of autism spectrum disorder that impairs brain development and causes problems with movement, speech, and even breathing. It is caused by mutations in a gene called MECP2 and primarily affects females. Although there are therapies to alleviate symptoms, there is currently no cure for this genetic disorder.

With CIRM funding ($1.37M and $1.65M awards), Alysson Muotri, PhD and a team of researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine have used brain organoids that mimic Rett syndrome to identify two drug candidates that returned the “mini-brains” to near-normal. The drugs restored calcium levels, neurotransmitter production, and electrical impulse activity.

Brain organoids, also referred to as “mini-brains”, are 3D models made of cells that can be used to analyze certain features of the human brain. Although they are far from perfect replicas, they can be used to study changes in physical structure or gene expression over time.

Dr. Muotri and his team created induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), a type of stem cell that can become virtually any type of cell. For the purposes of this study, they were created from the skin cells of Rett syndrome patients. The newly created iPSCs were then turned into brain cells and used to create “mini-brains”, thereby preserving each Rett syndrome patient’s genetic background. In addition to this, the team also created “mini-brains” that artificially lack the MECP2 gene, mimicking the issues with the same gene observed in Rett syndrome.

Lack of the MECP2 gene changed many things about the “mini-brains” such as shape, neuron subtypes present, gene expression patterns, neurotransmitter production, and decreases in calcium activity and electrical impulses. These changes led to major defects in the emergence of brainwaves.

To correct the changes caused by the lack of the MECP2 gene, the team treated the brain organoids with 14 different drug candidates known to affect various brain cell functions. Of all the drugs tested, two stood out: nefiracetam and PHA 543613. The two drugs resolved nearly all molecular and cellular symptoms observed in the Rett syndrome “mini-brains”, with the number active neurons doubling post treatment.

The two drugs were previously tested in clinical trials for the treatment of other conditions, meaning they have been shown to be safe for human consumption.

In a news release from UC San Diego Health, Dr. Muotri stresses that although the results for the two drugs are promising, the end treatment for Rett syndrome may require a multi-drug cocktail of sorts.

“There’s a tendency in the neuroscience field to look for highly specific drugs that hit exact targets, and to use a single drug for a complex disease. But we don’t do that for many other complex disorders, where multi-pronged treatments are used. Likewise, here no one target fixed all the problems. We need to start thinking in terms of drug cocktails, as have been successful in treating HIV and cancers.”

The full results of this study were published in EMBO Molecular Medicine.

Brain Stem Cells in a Dish to the Rescue

/ Karen Ring / Leave a comment

braindish

Image credit: CureCDKL5.org

The best way to impress your friends at the next party you attend might be to casually mention that scientists can grow miniature brain models in a dish using human stem cells. Sure, that might scare away some people, but when you explain how these tiny brain models can be used to study many different neurological diseases and could help identify new therapies to treat these diseases, your social status could sky rocket.

Recently, a group at UC San Diego used human stem cells to model a rare neurological disorder and identified a drug molecule that might be able to fix it. This work was funded in part by CIRM, and it was published today in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

The disorder is called MECP2 duplication syndrome. It’s caused by a duplication of the MECP2 gene located in the X chromosome, and is genetically inherited as an X-linked disorder, meaning the disease is much more common in males. Having extra copies of this gene causes a number of unfortunate symptoms including reduced muscle tone (hypotonia), intellectual disabilities, impaired speech, seizures, and developmental delays, to name a few. So far, treatments for this disorder only help ease the symptoms and do not cure the disease.

The group from UCSD decided to model this disease using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived from patients with MECP2 duplication syndrome. iPSCs can form any cell type in the body, and the group used this to their advantage by coaxing the iPSCs into the specific type of nerve cell affected by the disorder. Their hard work was rewarded when they observed that the diseased nerve cells acted differently than normal nerve cells without the disease.

In fact, the diseased nerve cells generated more connections with other nearby nerve cells, and this altered their ability to talk to each other and perform their normal functions. The senior author Alysson Muotri described the difference as an “over-synchronization of the neuronal networks”, meaning that they were more active and tended to fire their signals in unison.

After establishing a relevant nerve cell model of MECP2 duplication disorder, the group tested out a library of drug molecules and identified a new drug candidate that was able to rescue the diseased nerve cells from their “over-synchronized” activity.

The senior author Alysson Muotri commented on the study in a press release:

Alysson Muotri (Photo by David Ahntholz)  

This work is encouraging for several reasons. First, this compound had never before been considered a therapeutic alternative for neurological disorders. Second, the speed in which we were able to do this. With mouse models, this work would likely have taken years and results would not necessarily be useful for humans.

 

The press release goes on to describe how Muotri and his team plan to push their preclinical studies using human stem-cell based models forward in hopes of entering clinical trials in the near future.

 

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