High Throughput Small Molecule Screen for Reactivation of <i>FMR1</i> in Fragile X Syndrome Human Neural Cells

oleh: Jack F. V. Hunt, Meng Li, Ryan Risgaard, Gene E. Ananiev, Scott Wildman, Fan Zhang, Tim S. Bugni, Xinyu Zhao, Anita Bhattacharyya

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2021-12-01

Deskripsi

Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is the most common inherited cause of autism and intellectual disability. The majority of FXS cases are caused by transcriptional repression of the <i>FMR1</i> gene due to epigenetic changes that are not recapitulated in current animal disease models. FXS patient induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived gene edited reporter cell lines enable novel strategies to discover reactivators of <i>FMR1</i> expression in human cells on a much larger scale than previously possible. Here, we describe the workflow using FXS iPSC-derived neural cell lines to conduct a massive, unbiased screen for small molecule activators of the <i>FMR1</i> gene. The proof-of-principle methodology demonstrates the utility of human stem-cell-based methodology for the untargeted discovery of reactivators of the human <i>FMR1</i> gene that can be applied to other diseases.