Cell-specific differences in the processing of the R14W CAIV mutant associated with retinitis pigmentosa 17

Exploration of Potential Ewing Sarcoma Drugs from FDA-Approved Pharmaceuticals through Computational Drug Repositioning, Pharmacogenomics, Molecular Docking, and MD Simulation Studies

Novel drug development is a time-consuming process with relatively high debilitating costs. To overcome this problem, computational drug repositioning approaches are being used to predict the possible therapeutic scaffolds against different diseases. In the current study, computational drug repositioning approaches were employed to fetch the promising drugs from the pool of FDA-approved drugs against Ewing sarcoma. The binding interaction patterns and conformational behaviors of screened drugs within the active region of Ewing sarcoma protein (EWS) were confirmed through molecular docking profiles. Furthermore, pharmacogenomics analysis was employed to check the possible associations of selected drugs with Ewing sarcoma genes. Moreover, the stability behavior of selected docked complexes (drugs-EWS) was checked by molecular dynamics simulations. Taken together, astemizole, sulfinpyrazone, and pranlukast exhibited a result comparable to pazopanib and can be used as a possible therapeutic agent in the treatment of Ewing sarcoma.

Autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa with toxic gain of function: Mechanisms and therapeutics

Autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa is a form of retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited retinal degenerative disorder characterized by progressive loss of photoreceptors eventually leading to irreversible loss of vision. Mutations in genes involved in the basic functions of the visual system give rise to this condition. These mutations can either lead to loss of function or toxic gain of function phenotypes. While autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa caused by loss of function can be ideally treated by gene supplementation with a single vector to address a different spectrum of mutations in a gene, the same strategy cannot be applied to toxic gain of function phenotypes. In toxic gain of function phenotypes, the mutation in the gene results in the acquisition of a new function that can interrupt the functioning of the wildtype protein by various mechanisms leading to cell toxicity, thus making a single approach impractical. This review focuses on the genes and mechanisms that cause toxic gain of function phenotypes associated with autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa and provide a bird's eye view on current therapeutic strategies and ongoing clinical trials.

Allele frequency analysis of variants reported to cause autosomal dominant inherited retinal diseases question the involvement of 19% of genes and 10% of reported pathogenic variants

BACKGROUND

Next generation sequencing (NGS) generates a large amount of genetic data that can be used to better characterise disease-causing variants. Our aim was to examine allele frequencies of sequence variants reported to cause autosomal dominant inherited retinal diseases (AD-IRDs).

METHODS

Genetic information was collected from various databases, including PubMed, the Human Genome Mutation Database, RETNET and gnomAD.

RESULTS

We generated a database of 1223 variants reported in 58 genes, including their allele frequency in gnomAD that contains NGS data of over 138 000 individuals. While the majority of variants are not represented in gnomAD, 138 had an allele count of >1 and were examined carefully for various aspects including cosegregation and functional analyses. The analysis revealed 122 variants that were reported pathogenic but unlikely to cause AD-IRDs. Interestingly, in some cases, these unlikely pathogenic variants were the only ones reported to cause disease in AD inheritance pattern for a particular gene, therefore raising doubt regarding the involvement of 11 (19%) of the genes in AD-IRDs.

CONCLUSION

We predict that these data are not limited to a specific disease or inheritance pattern since non-pathogenic variants were mistakenly reported as pathogenic in various diseases. Our results should serve as a warning sign for geneticists, variant database curators and sequencing panels' developers not to automatically accept reported variants as pathogenic but cross-reference the information with large databases.