Inducing huntingtin inclusion formation in primary neuronal cell culture and in vivo by high-capacity adenoviral vectors expressing truncated and full-length huntingtin with polyglutamine expansion.
BACKGROUND
Huntington's disease (HD) is an inherited autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disease caused by the expansion of a CAG trinucleotide repeat in exon 1 of the huntingtin (htt) gene. Vector-mediated delivery of N-terminal fragments of mutant htt has been used to study htt function in vitro and to establish HD models in rats. Due to the large size of the htt cDNA vector-mediated delivery of full-length htt has not been achieved so far.


METHODS
High-capacity adenoviral (HC-Ad) vectors were generated expressing mutant and wild-type versions of N-terminal truncated and full-length htt either in vitro in primary neuronal cells or in the striatum of mice.


RESULTS
In vitro these vectors were used for transduction of primary neuronal cells isolated from E17 mouse embryos. Expression of mutant htt resulted in the formation of htt inclusions, a surrogate marker of the HD pathology. Kinetics of generation and localization of htt inclusions differed between truncated and full-length htt carrying identical mutations. Following injection into the striatum vector-mediated expression of mutant truncated htt led to prominent accumulation of htt inclusions in cell nuclei, while inclusions formed upon expression of mutant full-length htt localized to the cytoplasm.


CONCLUSIONS
These results indicate that HC-Ad vector-mediated in vitro and in vivo delivery of truncated and full-length mutant htt results in prominent inclusion formation in neuronal cells but in different cell compartments. These vectors will be useful tools for studying HD and may be used to generate large animal HD models.
Huang
Bin
B
Division of Gene Therapy, University of Ulm, Helmholtzstrasse 8/1, D-89081 Ulm, Germany.
Schiefer
Johannes
J
Sass
Christian
C
Kosinski
Christoph M
CM
Kochanek
Stefan
S
D000256:Adenoviridae / Q000235:genetics*; D000818:Animals; D018929:Cell Culture Techniques; D003342:Corpus Striatum / Q000378:metabolism; D005822:Genetic Vectors / Q000008:administration & dosage; D000071058:Huntingtin Protein; D006816:Huntington Disease; D002479:Inclusion Bodies / Q000378:metabolism*; D051379:Mice; D008807:Mice, Inbred BALB C; D009419:Nerve Tissue Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D009474:Neurons / Q000378:metabolism*; D009687:Nuclear Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D010455:Peptides / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D019680:Trinucleotide Repeat Expansion
C506812:Htt protein, mouse; D000071058:Huntingtin Protein; D009419:Nerve Tissue Proteins; D009687:Nuclear Proteins; D010455:Peptides; C097188:polyglutamine