SCA3 Archives |

Failure to repair DNA damage may be linked to SCA3

Written by Dr. Ambika Tewari Edited by Dr. Maria do Carmo Costa

Mutations in Ataxin-3 protein prevent the normal functioning of a DNA repair enzyme leading to an accumulation of errors

Cells are bombarded by thousands of DNA damaging events each day from internal and external sources. Internal sources include routine processes that occur within cells that generate reactive byproducts, while external sources include ultraviolet radiation. This DNA damage can be detrimental to cells. But the coordination of many DNA repair proteins helps to maintain the integrity of the genome. This prevent the accumulation of mutations that can lead to cancer.

DNA repair proteins play very important roles in the nervous system. During development, cells are actively growing and dividing and can incur many errors during these processes. Therefore, it is not surprising that numerous DNA repair proteins are expressed in the mammalian brain to prevent the accumulation of DNA damage. To much DNA damage can produce devastating consequences.

Damaged DNA molecule — Ataxin-3 plays a role in a DNA repair pathway which fixes double-strand DNA break. If these breaks are not fixed, there are devastating consequences. Photo used under license by Rost9/Shutterstock.com.

In fact, DNA repair deficiencies usually result in profound nervous system dysfunction in humans. Examples include neurodegeneration, microcephaly and brain tumors. Altered DNA repair signaling has been implicated in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Huntington’s disease. This implicates DNA repair proteins in genome maintenance in the nervous system. There are many different types of DNA damage and DNA repair. Each repair process has its own proteins and sequence of events that lead to either repair or cell death.

Ataxin-3 is known for its role in Spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3), an autosomal dominant disorder caused by a repeat expansion in the ATXN3 gene. Symptoms are progressive and include prominent ataxia, impaired balance, spasticity and eye abnormalities. These symptoms are primarily a result of cerebellum dysfunction, but brainstem and spinal cord regions also show abnormalities in SCA3 patients. Recent studies have shown that ataxin-3 is part of a complex of proteins that repair single-strand DNA breaks. A crucial member of this complex, polynucleotide kinase 3’-phosphatase (PNKP), is actively involved in not only repairing single-strand but also double-strand breaks. Since the activity of PNKP is dependent on ataxin-3, this group of researchers were eager to investigate whether ataxin-3 also functioned in the repair of double-strand DNA damage.

Results of the RISCA study: gaining a better understanding of how ataxia symptoms first appear in at-risk patients

Written By Dr. David Bushart Edited by Celeste Suart

The RISCA study will help researchers design smarter, more efficient clinical trials by teaching us about the very early stages of SCA

Ataxia research has grown significantly in recent years. Although much work still remains, we are gaining a better understanding of how ataxia affects patients. Several exciting, new therapies are currently being studied. These advances would not be possible without the involvement of ataxia patients in clinical research studies. Some clinical studies are drug trials, where patients are enrolled to help researchers determine whether new therapies are effective at treating ataxia. However, other equally important types of clinical studies also exist. Ataxia patients play a critical role in the success of these studies.

What would an ideal treatment for ataxia look like? Ideally, we would be able to treat patients when their symptoms are very mild, or perhaps even before their symptoms appear at all. However, there are several obstacles to developing and testing this kind of hypothetical treatment:

First, it can be hard to know which patients to treat if symptoms are not yet present! There are many people who descend from patients affected by SCA of some kind. They have a 50% chance of being affected. While some of these people have been genetically tested, many have not. This makes it difficult to predict whether they will eventually develop SCA at all.

Second, along those lines, it could be very difficult to predict whether a drug is working to prevent symptoms from appearing if we don’t know precisely when symptoms should appear. It is much easier to tell if a drug is working when it is given to a patient with obvious symptoms – if their symptoms improve, the drug works.

Third, it can be difficult for researchers to enroll enough patients into clinical trials to get a meaningful result. This is complicated by the fact that we don’t know the answers to the first two questions above. Until recently, it remained unclear how a trial to test such a hypothetical treatment would need to be designed.

Thankfully, recent work has helped us better understand the answers to these questions. Results from the RISCA study were recently released. RISCA, which is a prospective, longitudinal, observational cohort study, was designed to study individuals who are at-risk for developing SCA, and how SCA symptoms might first appear.

Doctor and patient discussing something while sitting at the table — The RISCA study was designed to give doctors and patients more information about when ataxia symptoms first start to appear. This information is incredibly important for future ataxia clinical trials. Photo used under license by S_L/Shutterstock.com.

A promising biomarker to track disease progression in SCA3

Written by Dr. Ambika Tewari Edited by Dr. Gulin Oz

Neurofilament light chain could provide a reliable readout of how far an SCA3 patient’s disease has progressed

How often have you heard that the most effective way to treat a disorder is early intervention? In reality, “early” is not possible for many disorders because patients receive a diagnosis only after the appearance of symptoms. But what if there was a way we could tell that a patient will develop a disease – even before they have any symptoms? Thankfully, that’s exactly what researchers in the field of biomarkers are trying to do. Biomarkers are biological indicators that are not only present in patients before the manifestation of symptoms, but can also be used to measure disease progression. In the SCA field, there have been a recent series of articles that have shed light on a promising biomarker for SCA3.

Spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3), also known as Machado-Joseph Disease, is the most common dominantly-inherited ataxia. It is caused by an expansion of CAG repeats (a small segment of DNA that codes for the amino acid glutamine) in the ATXN3 gene. An important feature of SCA3, as well as in other spinocerebellar ataxias, is the progressive development of symptoms. Symptoms usually occur across decades, and can be divided into three major phases: asymptomatic, preclinical, and symptomatic. In the asymptomatic phase, there is no evidence of clinical symptoms (even though the patient has had the SCA-causing mutation since birth). In the preclinical stage, patients show unspecified neurological symptoms such as muscle cramps and/or mild movement abnormalities. By the symptomatic (i.e., clinical) stage, patients have significant difficulty walking.

A Spinal Cord Motor Neuron sample stained purple. — Neurofilament light chain (NfL) is an important building block of neurons. But when neurons are damaged, NfL is released. Image of a spinal cord motor neuron courtesy of Berkshire Community College.

Currently in SCA research, disease progression is measured using the Scale for the Assessment and Rating of Ataxia (SARA). A score of 3 or more on the SARA differentiates clinical and preclinical groups. Structural and functional brain imaging methods (such as MRI) also track the progressive nature of the disease, like the SARA, but give us a visual picture of changes in the brain. Together, these methods have provided the SCA community with important insights into the clinical spectrum of each specific disease and its rate of progression. And, with the exciting progress we have recently made in the realm of SCA3 therapeutics, a biomarker that is cost-effective and easy to measure (like in a blood test) could provide a convenient way to assess how effective a potential treatment is.

Spotlight: The Neuro-D lab Leiden

Principal Investigator: Dr. Willeke van Roon-Mom

Location: Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands

Year Founded: 1995

What disease areas do you research?

SCA1
SCA3
Huntington’s Disease
Dutch – Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy
Alzheimer Disease

What models and techniques do you use?

Mouse Models
hiPSC-derived stem cells models
Post-mortem patient tissue
Antisense oligonucleotides
RNA sequencing
Behavioural assays
Imaging and molecular biology

A group photo of members of the Neuro-D lab Leiden standing outside on a patio. — This is a group picture taken during our brainstorm day last June. From left to right: Boyd Kenkhuis, Elena Daoutsali, Tom Metz, Ronald Buijsen, Willeke van Roon-Mom (PI), David Parfitt, Hannah Bakels, Barry Pepers, Linda van der Graaf and Elsa Kuijper. Image courtesy of Ronald Buijsen.

Research Focus

What is your research about?

The Neuro-D research group studies how diseases develop and progress at the molecular level in several neurodegenerative diseases. They focus on diseases that have protein aggregation, where the disease proteins clump up into bundles in the brain and don’t work correctly.

We focus strongly on translational research, meaning we try to bridge the gap between research happening in the laboratory to what is happening in medical clinics. To do this we use more “traditional” research models like animal and cell models. But we also use donated patient tissues and induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models, which is closer to what is seen in medical clinics.

Our aim is to unravel what is going wrong in these diseases, then discover and test potential novel drug targets and therapies.

One thing we are doing to work towards this goal is identifying biomarkers to measure how diseases progress over time. To do this, we use sequencing technology and other techniques to look at new and past data from patients.

Why do you do this research?

So far there are no therapies to stop the progression of ataxia. If we can understand what is happening in diseases in individual cells, we can develop therapies that can halt or maybe even reverse disease progression.

Identifying biomarkers is also important, because it will help us figure out the best time to treat patients when we eventually have a therapy to test.

The Neuro-D lab Leiden is part of the Dutch Center for RNA Therapeutics, which focuses on RNA therapies like antisense oligonucleotides. Logo designed by Justus Kuijer (VormMorgen), as 29 year old patient with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Are you recruiting human participants for research?

Yes, we are! We are looking for participants for a SCA1 natural history study and biomarker study. More information can be found here. Please note that information about this study is only available in Dutch.

Fun Fact

All our fridges and freezers have funny names like walrus, seal, snow grouse and snowflake.

For More Information, check out the Neuro-D lab Leiden website!

Written by Dr. Ronald Buijsen, Edited by Celeste Suart

Targeting protein degradation to alleviate symptoms in MJD

Written by Ambika Tewari Edited by Brenda Toscano Márquez

Trehalose, a natural autophagy inducer shows promise as a therapeutic candidate for MJD/SCA3

Every cell has an elaborate set of surveillance mechanisms to ensure optimal functioning. As proteins are synthesized, errors can occur leading to misfolded proteins. These abnormal proteins can be harmful to the cell. For this reasons it is important to monitortheir occurrence and decide whether they should be degraded. Autophagy is one way that these misfolded proteins can be degraded. Autophagy literally means self-eating and serves as a quality control mechanism. Defects in autophagy have been linked to several neurodegenerative disorders.

Machado-Joseph disease (MJD) or spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 is caused by an abnormal expanded CAG repeat in the ATXN3 gene. This CAG expansion causes misfolding of the ataxin-3 protein. The now unstable ataxin-3 is prone to forming aggregates in cells of some regions of the brain including the cerebellum, brainstem and basal ganglia. The accumulation of ataxin-3 in the cell leads to the progressive loss of neurons in the affected brain regions.

Normal ataxin-1 proteins becomes misfolded due to CAG expansion, but autophagy with proteins LC3B and Beclin-1 should degrade and break down misfolded ataxin-3 — A diagram of how autophagy should break down abnormal expanded ataxin-3. But what happens when this break down doesn’t happen? Diagram by Ambika Tewari using BioRender.

Researchers, eager to help patients with MJD, began to question why would the cellular surveillance system allow this toxic accumulation of misfolded ataxin-3. Surely there are mechanisms, like autophagy, to prevent this from occurring. This led to a number of studies that found that autophagy is defective in MJD patients. This was also confirmed in different mouse and cell models of MJD. In fact, earlier studies by the lab of Dr. Luís Pereira de Almeida found that increasing the amount of an autophagy protein (beclin-1) in the brain of an MJD mouse model improved some of the behavioral and neuropathological deficits. Together, these studies have provided evidence that autophagy may serve as a therapeutic target for MJD.