The Src/c-Abl pathway is a potential therapeutic target in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Keiko Imamura, Yuishin Izumi, Akira Watanabe, Kayoko Tsukita, Knut Woltjen, Takuya Yamamoto, Akitsu Hotta, Takayuki Kondo, Shiho Kitaoka, Akira Ohta, Akito Tanaka, Dai Watanabe, Mitsuya Morita, Hiroshi Takuma, Akira Tamaoka, Tilo Kunath, Selina Wray, Hirokazu Furuya, Takumi Era, Kouki MakiokaKoichi Okamoto, Takao Fujisawa, Hideki Nishitoh, Kengo Homma, Hidenori Ichijo, Jean-Pierre Julien, Nanako Obata, Masato Hosokawa, Haruhiko Akiyama, Satoshi Kaneko, Takashi Ayaki, Hidefumi Ito, Ryuji Kaji, Ryosuke Takahashi, Shinya Yamanaka, Haruhisa Inoue*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal disease causing progressive loss of motor neurons, still has no effective treatment. We developed a phenotypic screen to repurpose existing drugs using ALS motor neuron survival as readout. Motor neurons were generated from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived from an ALS patient with a mutation in superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1). Results of the screen showed that more than half of the hits targeted the Src/c-Abl signaling pathway. Src/c-Abl inhibitors increased survival of ALS iPSC-derived motor neurons in vitro. Knockdown of Src or c-Abl with small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) also rescued ALS motor neuron degeneration. One of the hits, bosutinib, boosted autophagy, reduced the amount of misfolded mutant SOD1 protein, and attenuated altered expression of mitochondrial genes. Bosutinib also increased survival in vitro of ALS iPSC-derived motor neurons from patients with sporadic ALS or other forms of familial ALS caused by mutations in TAR DNA binding protein (TDP-43) or repeat expansions in C9orf72 Furthermore, bosutinib treatment modestly extended survival of a mouse model of ALS with an SOD1 mutation, suggesting that Src/c-Abl may be a potentially useful target for developing new drugs to treat ALS.

Original languageEnglish
JournalScience Translational Medicine
Volume9
Issue number391
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 24 May 2017

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