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Di-valent siRNA-mediated silencing of MSH3 blocks somatic repeat expansion in mouse models of Huntington's disease

O'Reilly, Daniel
Belgrad, Jillian
Ferguson, Chantal
Summers, Ashley
Sapp, Ellen
McHugh, Cassandra
Mathews, Ella
Boudi, Adel
Buchwald, Julianna
Ly, Socheata
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Abstract

Huntington's disease (HD) is a severe neurodegenerative disorder caused by the expansion of the CAG trinucleotide repeat tract in the huntingtin gene. Inheritance of expanded CAG repeats is needed for HD manifestation, but further somatic expansion of the repeat tract in non-dividing cells, particularly striatal neurons, hastens disease onset. Called somatic repeat expansion, this process is mediated by the mismatch repair (MMR) pathway. Among MMR components identified as modifiers of HD onset, MutS homolog 3 (MSH3) has emerged as a potentially safe and effective target for therapeutic intervention. Here, we identify a fully chemically modified short interfering RNA (siRNA) that robustly silences Msh3 in vitro and in vivo. When synthesized in a di-valent scaffold, siRNA-mediated silencing of Msh3 effectively blocked CAG-repeat expansion in the striatum of two HD mouse models without affecting tumor-associated microsatellite instability or mRNA expression of other MMR genes. Our findings establish a promising treatment approach for patients with HD and other repeat expansion diseases.

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O'Reilly D, Belgrad J, Ferguson C, Summers A, Sapp E, McHugh C, Mathews E, Boudi A, Buchwald J, Ly S, Moreno D, Furgal R, Luu E, Kennedy Z, Hariharan V, Monopoli K, Yang XW, Carroll J, DiFiglia M, Aronin N, Khvorova A. Di-valent siRNA-mediated silencing of MSH3 blocks somatic repeat expansion in mouse models of Huntington's disease. Mol Ther. 2023 Jun 7;31(6):1661-1674. doi: 10.1016/j.ymthe.2023.05.006. Epub 2023 May 12. PMID: 37177784; PMCID: PMC10277892.

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DOI
10.1016/j.ymthe.2023.05.006
PubMed ID
37177784
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Copyright 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Attribution 4.0 International