SMA

Live long and prosper: healthy mitochondria, healthy motor neurons?

November 17, 2016 By Jennifer Lu in Research Tags: Bond Life Sciences Center, SMA

Chris Lorson, a professor of veterinary pathobiology, and Mark Hannink, a professor of biochemistry, want to find a new way to help motor neurons live a long and healthy life. Their question: what’s the relationship between motor neuron sruvival and a cellular component called mitochondria?

The two researchers at the Bond Life Sciences Center were awarded preliminary funding from the Bond LSC to pursue this question. Their findings could lead to new targets for therapies to treat a type of muscular dystrophy called spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA.

Spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic disease characterized by the death of motor neurons in the spinal cord, is caused by a mutation in the Survival Motor Neuron 1, or SMN1, gene. Patients with SMA develop muscle weakness and deterioration that spread inwards from the hands and feet, which progresses to interfere with mobility and breathing. The severity of symptoms and time of onset depend on how well a related gene is able to compensate for the lack of SMN1. As a result, treatment strategies usually focus on improving the activation of SMN1’s back-up gene.

Hannink and Lorson, however, are interested in a different pathway that is related to mitochondria dsyfunction.

Mitochondria are like the cell’s battery packs. Produced in the cell body, mitochondria migrate to the other end of the motor neuron to provide the energy to send electrochemical signals to recipient muscles and nerves. When mitochondria break down, the cell packs them into vacuoles that return to the cell body for recycling or removal.

“I saw a report that said that in SMA, there’s evidence for dysfunctional mitochondria in spinal motor neuron atrophy,” Hannink said. “My lab knows something about how mitochondria respond to stress.”

“There’s a lot of information out there that hints at it,” Lorson, an expert in SMA, said. “A number of the same responses you see in the stress pathway are also activated in neurodegeneration.”

To test their hypothesis, Hannink and Lorson plan to make motor neurons from pluripotent stem cells taken from people with and without SMA, and compare mitochondrial function and cell survival between the two groups. Then, they will test if a number of different genes that are known to be important for mitochondrial function will affect motor neuron health in both SMA and non-SMA derived cells.

“If you look at the tool chest of SMA therapeutics right now,” Lorson said, “you have a number of very obvious targets.”

Most approaches aim to boost the performance of the SMN or its back-up gene, but there are also options like neuroprotectants and skeletal muscle activators. Molecules that maintain healthy mitochondrial function could be another possibility.

“These are things that don’t worry about the state of the SMN gene and are targeting something in addition to, supplemental to or as an alternative to SMN,” Lorson said. “And that’s where this project would fall.”

This seed funding is one of seven awarded this year at the Bond Life Sciences Center. These awards, which range from $40,000 to $100,000 in funding, foster inter-laboratory collaboration and make possible the development of pilot projects.

Finding hope by fixing a gene

July 21, 2016 By Roger Meissen in Research Tags: genetics, SMA

Lorson lab publishes research on a new therapeutic path to help treat spinal muscular atrophy

Erkan Osman shows iImages of neuro-muscular junctions. Osman, a post-doctoral fellow in Chris Lorson’s lab, co-authored research in the journal Molecular Therapy that details work in binding a synthetic nucleic acid to a normally useless motor neuron backup gene to help treat spinal muscular atrophy. | photo by Phillip Sitter, Bond LSC

By Phillip Sitter | Bond LSC

Imagine you are forced to jump out of an airplane.

Luckily, you find a parachute that even has a backup chute. You leap out of the plane and free-fall.

You pull the cord to open your parachute, but it doesn’t open. Don’t panic, though, you have a backup. But, you pull that cord and nothing happens. Now you face the reality of a death as firm and un-yielding as the ground rushing into your view.

This air disaster mirrors the mechanism and mortal threat posed for people born with the genetic problem that causes spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

Chris Lorson’s lab at the Bond Life Sciences Center would like to change that situation by making an effective genetic backup to the defective gene that results in SMA. The journal Molecular Therapy, a publication of Nature, recently accepted their findings for publication.

The defect occurs in a specific gene called Survival Motor Neuron (SMN). If the SMN gene is defective because of mutation, this causes a deficiency of the SMN protein it is supposed to produce. Without this protein, the neurons that control muscle movement malfunction. Signals cease to stimulate muscles.

Muscles that are not stimulated atrophy, grow weak and waste away. At first this happens with the skeletal muscles, which leads to loss of motor function for simple activities like walking and swallowing. If it happens with the muscles that control breathing, you die.

News of the disease often presents a devastating prognosis. Infants have it worst; babies diagnosed with SMA only have a life expectancy of two to five years from birth.

Fortunately, our bodies have a sort of backup for the SMN gene, another one called SMN-2. But, like a useless backup parachute for an unlucky skydiver, SMN-2 isn’t actually very good at producing proteins of the quality needed to stave off SMA. It might just be a vestigial trait on its way down the evolutionary drain — it doesn’t even exist in the closest primate relatives of humans.

Discoveries in the Lorson lab look to make the SMN-2 gene an effective backup, and their recent publications indicate that this may be a viable possibility for future SMA treatments.

Christian Lorson studies the genes that cause SMA when they fail to adequately function. His team’s on a backup gene that greatly extended life expectancy in mouse studies. | photo by Phillip Sitter, Bond LSC

“What we’ve been working on in the lab is a potential therapeutic, and what it does, it’s a large small molecule that is called an antisense oligonucleotide, or ASO,” Lorson said. “And this is something that is essentially a synthetic piece of nucleic acid that is able to go in and bind to a specific sequence within a gene.”

Once bound to SMN-2, the ASO is designed to alter mRNA splicing, “essentially, the editing of a gene,” Lorson said. Speaking in terms akin to products leaving a factory, Lorson said that the attached ASO makes SMN-2 produce good quality proteins, the ones that it wasn’t able to produce before.

In other words, suddenly the backup protein-factory that was making poor-quality products is now pumping out top-of-the-line stuff that will work.

Previous research identified a strong ASO contender to experiment with, and Lorson said current research is about optimizing an ASO to extend survival times in mice with SMA — from just 13 days to five months after only one injection at birth.

Lorson stressed that his lab’s achievement doesn’t promise a fast cure for SMA. He said it is unlikely a single compound will address the full gambit of effects that people with SMA suffer, especially given that people can be identified as having SMA at any time from birth through later in life — often late onset SMA tends to be less severe than diagnosis as an infant.

There’s not yet any single compound treatment for SMA that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, Lorson said, so he cautions against getting hopes up of for a revolutionary treatment for SMA coming onto the market soon — “Near future but not tomorrow.”

He acknowledged, though, that “from a research perspective, things seem to be moving at lightning speed, but if you are a patient or a family member, things can never go fast enough, so I think there’s a realized sense of urgency, whether or not it’s for patients who don’t have the disease yet, are not born, or for patients who have had the disease for a decade and are wondering when their opportunity would come.”

Lorson’s work is funded in part by Cure SMA, FightSMA and the Gwendolyn Strong foundations. Erkan Osman, a post-doctoral fellow in Lorson’s lab and the first author on the most recent paper, won the emerging investigator award from FightSMA and Gwendolyn Strong in 2015.

Researchers flex new muscle in SMA drug development

July 16, 2014 By Paige Blankenbuehler in Research Tags: Bond Life Sciences Center, Chris Lorson, Christian Lorson, Claire Gibbs, clinical trial, clinical trials for SMA, cures, drugs, gene therapy, health, Lauren Gibbs, Natalie Gibbs, research, science, SMA, SMA cure, spinal muscular atrophy, Tim Gibbs, University of Missouri

By Paige Blankenbuehler

Lauren and Claire Gibbs share contagious laughter, ambition and a charismatic sarcasm.

Both are honor students at Shawnee Mission East High School in a Kansas City suburb.

They also share a neuromuscular disease called spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), designated as an “orphan disease” because it affects fewer than 200,000 people in the U.S.

However, the landscape for individuals with SMA is quickly changing with the development of new drugs.

More than 7 million people in the United States are carriers (approximately 1 in 40) of the so-called “rare” neurodegenerative disease, SMA.

Lauren,17 (left) and Claire, 16 (right), say their shared SMA diagnosis has strengthened their relationship and presented them with opportunities to travel and share their experiences. | Photo provided by the Gibbs family.

Faces of SMA

The success of therapeutics in lab experiments provides a new layer of hope for individuals and families living with the disease.

Lauren, now 17, fit the criteria for SMA Type III, while Claire, now 16, showed symptoms of a more severe manifestation of the disease, SMA Type II.

Lauren and Claire Gibbs were diagnosed on the same day.

Despite their numerous similarities, the biggest disparity between them is mobility.

Claire uses a power wheel chair while Lauren is able to use a manual chair. It’s not unusual to see Lauren being pulled along in her chair, playfully hanging onto the back of Claire’s motorized chair.

Lauren is participating in a clinical trial with ISIS-SMN_Rx a compound developed by Isis Pharmaceuticals, a leading company in the antisense drug discovery and development based in Carlsbad, Calif. Lauren feels that she has gained stamina and a greater ability to walk — a feat that wasn’t routine just five years ago.

Prior to the trial, Lauren was able to walk only for short distances.

Time and Natalie Gibbs with their daughters Lauren, 17 (left) and Claire, 16 (right) in Washington D.C. The family have been visible advocates in the fight for a cure for spinal muscular atrophy. | Photo provided by the Gibbs family. — Tim and Natalie Gibbs with their daughters Lauren, 17 (left) and Claire, 16 (right) in Washington D.C. The Gibbs have been visible advocates in the fight for a cure for spinal muscular atrophy. | Photo provided by the Gibbs family.

Bringing New Hope

A new experimental drug developed by researchers at the Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center, is bringing hope to individuals with the orphan disease affecting one in 6,000 people.

Christian Lorson PhD, investigator in the Bond Life Sciences Center and Professor of Veterinary Pathobiology at the University of Missouri, has been researching SMA for seventeen years and has made a recent breakthrough with the development of a novel compound found to be highly efficacious in animal models of disease. In April, a patent was filed for Lorson’s compound for use in SMA.

Lorson’s therapeutic, an antisense oligonucleotide (a fancy name for a small molecule therapeutic that falls under the umbrella of gene therapy), repairs expression from the gene affected by the disease. The research was published May in in the Oxford University Press, Human Molecular Genetics.

The drug developed by Lorson’s lab is conceptually similar to ISIS-SMN_Rx already in clinical trial developed by Isis Pharmaceuticals and a team of investigators at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory headed by Dr. Adrian Krainer.

Antisense drugs are not a new practice, but their wide-spread adoption seems to be on the cusp with recent success stories like the commercialization of an FDA-approved antisense compound produced by Isis in 2013 called Kynamro for the treatment of homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, a high cholesterol disorder that is passed down through families.

Science behind success

The National Institutes of Health has listed SMA as the neurological disease closest to finding a cure. Discoveries made by the Lorson Lab have contributed significantly to current scientific understanding of the disease mechanisms and to the advances being made in finding an effective treatment for SMA.

These antisense therapies work because of the genetic makeup of SMA —the genetics are incredibly clear: a single, specific gene called Survival Motor Neuron 1 (SMN1) has been pinpointed as the cause of SMA.

SMA is a neurodegenerative disorder, meaning muscles become weaker over time due to sick or dying neurons.

These neurons become less functional because of low levels of the SMN.

Remarkably, the disease can be reversed in animal models of disease if the nearly identical duplicate gene, SMN2, can be “turned on” to compensate for low SMN levels.

Lorson’s antisense oligonucleotide therapeutic provides incredible specificity because it hones in on a specific genetic target sequence within SMN2 RNA and allows proper “editing” of the RNA encoding the SMN protein. The strategy is to “repress the repressor,” Lorson said.

The SMA-specific defect lies at the RNA step – the “cutting and splicing” of important RNA sequences does not happen efficiently in SMN2 RNAs because of a several “repressor” signals.

“The final chapter of the book — or the final exon — is omitted,” Lorson said. “But the exciting part is that the important chapter is still there – and can be tricked into being read correctly: if you know how.”

The new, antisense oligonucleotide seems to know how to get the job done.

The existence of such similar genes as SMN1 and SMN2 in humans creates a rare genetic landscape lending itself especially to a therapeutic development for SMA.

Humans are unique in this duplication — something Lorson calls a “genetic happenstance” that, on an evolutionary scale, may as well have happened yesterday.

Why humans have developed this redundant gene is unknown.

Thalia Sass, an MU biological sciences major, genotypes samples in the Lorson Lab where spinal muscular atrophy is researched.

Timing is everything

In addition to the developments of new SMA therapeutics, Lorson and his lab sought to answer an important biological question concerning the disease: When can a therapeutic be administered and still show some degree of efficacy?

Lorson’s research found that the earliest administration of a treatment provided the best outlook— extending the survival of laboratory mice by 500 to 700 percent, “a profound rescue,” according to his research published in April in the Oxford University Press, Human Molecular Genetics.

A near complete, 90 percent rescue was demonstrated in severe SMA mouse models. But even when the therapeutic was administered after the onset of SMA symptoms, there was still a significant impact on the severity of the disease.

“If you replace SMN early and get (a therapeutic) to cells that are important to the disease, you correct it,” Lorson said. “This provides hope that patients who have been diagnosed will still see some therapeutic benefit even if it is clear that the best results will likely come from early therapeutic administration.”

In Lorson’s study it’s definitive that the earlier a therapeutic can be administered, the better the outcome for individuals with SMA.

“This really points towards a strong push for neonatal screening,” Lorson said. “Infant screening would likely be incredibly beneficial for SMA and that’s something that the SMA community is really excited about.”

A breakthrough for families

On June 2, Lauren and Claire Gibbs attended a routine, annual rehab appointment with Dr. Robert Rinaldi, MD, division of pediatric rehabilitation medicine and attending physician at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Mo Dr. Rinaldi is not associated with the Isis clinical trial.

The appointment was like a reunion among close friends — Rinaldi began seeing Claire and Lauren Gibbs 16 years ago, the first year that he began working at the hospital and when the girls were one- and two-years-old, respectively.

The girls did all of the routine tests —measuring strength of grip and breathing, and assessing range of movement with the occupational and physical therapists.

A little later, Rinaldi sat with Natalie Gibbs, Lauren and Claire’s mother and a relentless advocate for advancement in SMA awareness.

Typically the muscles of individuals with SMA deteriorate over time, but together they inspected the definition of a new calf muscle on Lauren’s left leg.

For a young woman with Type III SMA — this means she can walk for short distances with little discomfort but still uses her wheel chair a majority of the time — Lauren’s new calf muscle is a remarkable achievement.

As Lauren continues to participate in the ISIS antisense therapy clinical trial, her conditions continue to improve dramatically, even with the late administration of the therapy — in her case, 16 years after her diagnosis and onset of effects.

Lauren believes her ability and stamina for walking have increased significantly.

“Quite frankly my jaw almost hit the ground when she stood up — the change was that impressive to me,” Rinaldi said.

Rinaldi, also the co-director of the Nerve and Muscle Clinics at the hospital, had last seen Lauren two years ago. He said the Lauren he saw during a routine rehab appointment in June was like seeing a new person altogether.

“The way she stood up from the wheel chair — how quickly she did that with no support — her posture when she was standing up was more upright, her pelvis was in a much better position, her core was straighter,” Rinaldi said. “It struck me immediately how much better she looked.”

Lauren Gibbs is the first of Rinaldi’s patients to have participated in the ISIS clinical trial.

“It’s moving very fast in this field,” Rinaldi said. “I think the technology that’s evolving in research is opening up more avenues for investigation for us and there’s a big desire to find a cure for these types of diseases.”

The progress has rewarded the Gibbs family’s advocacy in SMA awareness and they’ve been able to set new goals they didn’t imagine were possible when the diagnoses for Lauren and Claire were made. Natalie Gibbs is a long-time member of Families of SMA and is currently on their Board of Directors.

The organization Families of SMA is currently providing funding to Lorson to advance this research area.

“We’re able to see first hand — and our physician who has been watching them for sixteen years has seen — that everything we’re doing in the clinical trials is really making a difference,” Natalie Gibbs said.

Over the course of their daughters’ lives, Natalie and her husband Tim Gibbs say a shift in momentum has accelerated the technology and research toward finding a cure for SMA.

“I am really impressed with the progress Lauren has made with the trial and how well Claire is doing overall,” Natalie Gibbs said. “Even though it’s a progressive and very devastating type of disease, I feel like we’re really conquering it.”

Link to publications:

Therapeutic window study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24722206

University of Missouri ASO: http://hmg.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/04/29/hmg.ddu198.full.pdf+html

For more information on spinal muscular atrophy, visit FightSMA.org and fsma.org