Lentiviral Gene Therapy for the Correction of Congenital Dyserythropoietic Anemia Type II

Congenital dyserythropoietic anemias (CDAs) are a group of inherited anemias that affect the development of the erythroid lineage. CDA type II is the most common one: it accounts for around 60% of all cases, and more than 600 cases have been reported so far. CDA II is caused by biallelic mutations in the SEC23B gene and is characterized by ineffective erythropoiesis with morphologic abnormalities of erythroblasts, hemolysis, and secondary iron overload, which is the most frequent complication. Patients usually suffer from variable degrees of jaundice, splenomegaly, and absolute reticulocyte count inadequate depending on the degree of anemia. Hydrops fetalis, aplastic crisis and gallstones are other associated clinical signs. CDA II bone marrow is characterized by the presence of more than 10% mature binucleated erythroblasts. Another distinctive feature of CDA II erythrocytes is hypoglycosylation of membrane proteins. The management of CDA II is generally limited to blood transfusion and iron chelation. Splenectomy has proved to reduce the number of transfusions in CDA II patients. However, allogenic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) represents the only curative option for this disease. Autologous HSCT of genetically corrected cells will mean a definitive treatment for CDA II, overcoming the limitations of allogeneic HSCT, such as limited availability of HLA-matched donors, infections linked to immunosuppression or development of graft versus host disease. This strategy has been used to treat many inherited hematological diseases, including red blood cell diseases such as β-thalassemia, sickle cell disease or pyruvate kinase deficiency. Therefore, we have addressed a similar strategy to be applied to CDAII patients.

Two different lentiviral vectors carrying either wild type or codon optimized versions of SEC23B cDNA (wtSEC23B LV or coSEC23B LV, respectively) under the control of human phosphoglycerate kinase promoter (PGK) have been developed. Taking advantage of a CDA II model, in which SEC23B knock-out was done in human hematopoietic progenitors through gene editing, we have determined the most effective SEC23B LV version and the most suitable multiplicity of infection (MOI) to compensate protein deficiency. SEC23B knock out human hematopoietic progenitors (CD34 ⁺ cells; 80% frame shift mutations; SEC23B^KO) showed a sharp reduction in SEC23B protein level. Those SEC23B^KO hematopoietic progenitors were transduced with both lentiviral vectors at MOIs ranged from 3 to 25. We observed that SEC23B protein reached physiological or even supraphysiological levels. In addition, the reduction in the number of erythroid colony forming units (CFUs) identified in SEC23B^KO CD34 ⁺ cells, was partially restored in the LV transduced SEC23B^KO progenitors. Significantly, we observed a clear correlation between the used MOI and the vector copy number (VCN) in the CFUs derived from transduced SEC23B^KO CD34 ⁺ cells. Furthermore, SEC23B^KO hematopoietic progenitors were subjected to an in vitro erythroid differentiation protocol. A sharp decrease in the cell growth throughout erythroid differentiation was observed in SEC23B^KO condition. However, the transduction with any of SEC23B LVs at MOIs above 10 was able to recover cell expansion to values equal to wild type cells. Interestingly, total level of protein glycosylation during erythroid differentiation was enhanced after SEC23B LV transduction. Glycosylation level in wtSEC23B LV transduced SEC23B^KO cells was most similar to the level in wild type cells. Then, we transduced peripheral blood-derived hematopoietic progenitors (PB-CD34 ⁺ cells) from a CDA II patient with wtSEC23B LV at MOI 25 and differentiated in vitro to erythroid cells. A complete restauration of SEC23B protein expression and a cell growth increase of wtSEC23B transduced CDAII was observed with vector copy numbers of 0.3 after 14 days under erythroid conditions. More importantly, we could find a decrease in the percentage of bi-/multinucleated erythroid cells generated in vitro after wtSEC23B LV transduction.

In summary, SEC23B LV compensate the SEC23B deficiency in SEC23B^KO and in CDAII hematopoietic progenitor cells, paving the way for gene therapy of autologous hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell as an alternative and feasible treatment for CDA II.