The goal of this project has been to develop therapeutic strategies for protein misfolding diseases caused by excessive degradation of misfolded proteins and loss of protein function. The focus for this work is lysosomal storage disorders (LSDs), a group of more than 50 known inherited metabolic diseases characterized by deficiency in hydrolytic enzymes and consequent buildup of lysosomal macromolecules. Gaucher’s Disease (GD) is used as a representative of the family of LSDs in this study. GD is caused by mutations in the gene encoding lysosomal glucocerebrosidase (GC) and consequent accumulation of the GC substrate, glucocerebroside. The most prevalent mutations among GD patients are single amino acid substitutions that do not directly impair GC activity, but rather destabilize its native folding. GC normally folds in the ER and trafficks through the secretory pathway to the lysosomes. GC variants containing destabilizing mutations misfold and are retrotranslocated to the cytoplasm for ER-associated degradation (ERAD). However, evidence shows that if misfolding-prone, mutated GC variants are forced to fold into their 3D native structure, they retain catalytic activity. This study describes strategies to remodel the network of cellular pathways that maintain protein homeostasis and to create a folding environment favorable to the folding of unstable, degradation-prone lysosomal enzyme variants. We demonstrated that folding and trafficking of mutated GC variants can be achieved by modulating the protein folding network in fibroblasts derived from patients with GD to i) upregulate the expression of ER luminal chaperones, ii) inhibit the ERAD pathway, and iii) enhance the pool of mutated GC in the ER amenable to folding rescue. We also demonstrated that the same cell engineering strategies that proved successful in rescuing the folding and activity of mutated GC enable rescue of mutated enzyme variants in fibroblasts derived from patients with Tay-Sachs disease, a LSD caused by deficiency of lysosomal hexosaminidase A activity. As a result, the current study provides insights for the development of therapeutic strategies for GD based on the modulation of general cellular pathways that maintain protein homeostasis that could in principle be applied to the treatment of multiple LSDs.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:RICE/oai:scholarship.rice.edu:1911/64709 |
| Date | 06 September 2012 |
| Creators | Wang, Fan |
| Contributors | Segatori, Laura |
| Source Sets | Rice University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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