New angle of attack on spinal muscular atrophy (SMA)

The first treatment for the disease (nusinersen) gained U.S. market approval last December. Now a new discovery led by Brown University scientists deepens the basic understanding of how the genetic mutation that causes SMA appears to undermine the communication between motor neurons and the muscles they control.

“We are making progress,” said Anne Hart, professor of neuroscience at Brown and senior author of the new study.
About one in 8,000 children is born with some form of SMA in which mutations in both copies of the gene that code for the survival motor neuron (SMN) protein cripples its production. The end result – as explained through the new study – is dysfunction of motor neurons that control muscle along with muscle atrophy and weakness. In the most acute form (Type I) children die by age two as even functions as fundamental as breathing become compromised. With other SMA types, patients can live much longer, but they still suffer significant muscle weakness.

New approach to studying SMA

It’s a positive sign that spinal cord injections of nusinersen, the newly approved drug, restore some motor function and prolong survival by improving SMN production, Hart said, but researchers can make further and perhaps more lasting headway by understanding how the lack of SMN ultimately undermines muscle function.

Last year her lab published evidence that one mechanistic consequence of the disease is a disruption of the process by which neurons can recycle and reuse proteins needed for neural control of muscle.
Experiments described in the new study identify another mechanism. Led by graduate student Patrick O’Hern, the team at Brown and the University of Cologne in Germany uncovered a complex cause-and-effect sequence in both C. elegans worm and mouse models of SMA. A lack of SMN hinders the working of a protein called Gemin3. That, in turn, lessens the activity of a particular microRNA, which is needed to prevent the overexpression of a motor neuron receptor called m2R.

The role of those receptors is to sense when the neuron has released enough of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine to signal a muscle cell to move. With too many m2R receptors, owing to their overexpression in SMA, Hart said, motor neurons may be too sensitive to their acetylcholine output and consequently shut off their release prematurely. That may be severely undermining the effectiveness of the motor neuron signal and therefore proper muscle function.

Gemin3 protein 

The link between the disease and the regulation of protein translation that microRNA provides was the Gemin3 protein, Hart said. O’Hern had noticed that in some studies Gemin3 interacted with SMN and in other studies it was wrapped up in a complex of proteins that interact with microRNA.

O’Hern and the team not only traced this whole mechanism, but they also showed that they could address it at several stages along the way, restoring healthy neuron development and muscle function in the worms. In lab tests in Cologne with mouse motor neurons, moreover, they found that when they added the m2R-blocking drug methoctramine, they could restore crucial benchmarks of motor neuron function and health.
The m2R receptors are therefore a new potential target for treating the disease, Hart said. But only more work will tell whether that’s true for more than just worms and mouse tissue.
“If you decrease the activity of these receptors, it could be beneficial,” she said. “This needs to be tried in other models, too.”