Quantifying and Mitigating Motor Phenotypes Induced by Antisense Oligonucleotides in the Central Nervous System [preprint]
Authors
Moazami, Michael P.Rembetsy-Brown, Julia M.
Wang, Feng
Krishnamurthy, Pranathi Meda
Weiss, Alexandra
Marosfoi, Miklos G.
King, Robert M.
Motwani, Mona
Gray-Edwards, Heather L
Fitzgerald, Katherine A.
Brown, Robert H. Jr.
Watts, Jonathan K
UMass Chan Affiliations
Graduate School of Biomedical SciencesDepartment of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology
Program in Innate Immunity, Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology, Department of Medicine
Department of Radiology
Department of Neurology
RNA Therapeutics Institute
Document Type
PreprintPublication Date
2021-02-15Keywords
pharmacologytoxicology
motor phenotypes
antisense Ooigonucleotides
medicinal chemistry
Biochemistry
Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmaceutics
Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience
Nervous System
Nervous System Diseases
Neurology
Nucleic Acids, Nucleotides, and Nucleosides
Pharmacology
Toxicology
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) are emerging as a promising class of therapeutics for neurological diseases. When injected directly into the cerebrospinal fluid, ASOs distribute broadly across brain regions and exert long-lasting therapeutic effects. However, many phosphorothioate (PS)-modified gapmer ASOs show transient motor phenotypes when injected into the cerebrospinal fluid, ranging from reduced motor activity to ataxia or acute seizure-like phenotypes. The effect of sugar and phosphate modifications on these phenotypes has not previously been systematically studied. Using a behavioral scoring assay customized to reflect the timing and nature of these effects, we show that both sugar and phosphate modifications influence acute motor phenotypes. Among sugar analogues, PS-DNA induces the strongest motor phenotype while 2’-substituted RNA modifications improve the tolerability of PS-ASOs. This helps explain why gapmer ASOs have been more challenging to develop clinically relative to steric blocker ASOs, which have a reduced tendency to induce these effects. Reducing the PS content of gapmer ASOs, which contain a stretch of PS-DNA, improves their toxicity profile, but in some cases also reduces their efficacy or duration of effect. Reducing PS content improved the acute tolerability of ASOs in both mice and sheep. We show that this acute toxicity is not mediated by the major nucleic acid sensing innate immune pathways. Formulating ASOs with calcium ions before injecting into the CNS further improved their tolerability, but through a mechanism at least partially distinct from the reduction of PS content. Overall, our work identifies and quantifies an understudied aspect of oligonucleotide toxicology in the CNS, explores its mechanism, and presents platform-level medicinal chemistry approaches that improve tolerability of this class of compounds.Source
bioRxiv 2021.02.14.431096; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.14.431096. Link to preprint on bioRxiv.
DOI
10.1101/2021.02.14.431096Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/29721Notes
This article is a preprint. Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been certified by peer review.
Rights
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.Distribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1101/2021.02.14.431096
Scopus Count
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.