Image: Wikimedia Commons. (Source: The Cell Nucleus and Aging: Tantalizing Clues and Hopeful Promises. Scaffidi P, Gordon L, Misteli T. PLoS Biology Vol. 3/11/2005, e395 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0030395)
Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome, better known as progeria, is a highly rare genetic disease of premature aging. It takes a cruel toll: Children begin losing body fat and hair, develop the thin, tight skin typical of elderly people and suffer from hearing loss, bone problems, hardening of the arteries, stiff joints and failure to grow. They die at an average age of 14½, typically from heart disease resembling that of old age.
This is the third year that Jacob Works has made the trip down to Boston Children’s Hospital from Maine. With research assistant Haley Medeiros, he looks at pictures, answers questions, manipulates blocks and mimes actions like knocking on a door. His father, Travis, and another research assistant look on through a window.
“At first, we had to practically bribe him with an iPad with every task,” Travis says. “This year he’s more excited, because he understands more and is more confident and able to share more.”
Jacob, 11, was diagnosed in 2011 with Phelan-McDermid Syndrome, a rare genetic condition that typically causes children to be born “floppy,” with low muscle tone, and to have little or no speech, developmental delay and, often, autism-like behaviors. At the time, Jacob was one of about 800 known cases. But through chromosomal microarray testing, introduced in just the past decade for children with autism symptoms, more cases are being picked up. …
Will Ward’s birthday falls on Rare Disease Day (Feb. 28). That’s an interesting coincidence because he has a rare disease: X-linked myotubular myopathy (MTM), a rare, muscle-weakening disease that affects only boys. Originally on Snapchat, this video captures the Ward family’s recent visit to the lab of Alan Beggs, PhD to learn more about MTM research.
Beggs, director of the Manton Center for Orphan Disease Research at Boston Children’s Hospital, has known Will since he was a newborn in intensive care. In this lab walk-though you’ll see a freezer filled with muscle samples, stored in liquid nitrogen; muscle tissue under a microscope; gene sequencing to identify mutations causing MTM and other congenital myopathies and a testing station to measure muscle function in samples taken from animal models.
Beggs’s work, which began more than 20 years ago, led to pivotal studies in male Labrador retrievers who happen to have the same mutation and are born with a canine form of MTM. By adding back a healthy copy of the gene, Beggs’s collaborators got the dogs back on their feet running around again. (Read about Nibs, a female MTM carrier whose descendants took part in these studies.)
Based on the canine results, a clinical trial is now testing gene therapy in boys under the age of 5 with MTM. The phase I/II trial aims to enroll 12 boys and measure their respiratory and motor function and muscle structure after being dosed with a vector carrying a corrected MTM gene. In the meantime, observational and retrospective studies are characterizing the natural history of boys with MTM.
Boston Children’s Hospital and Amgen will collaborate to discover and accelerate non-addicting pain drugs.
As the opioid epidemic deepens and drug overdoses increase, effective non-addicting painkillers are desperately needed. Efforts to discover new pain pathways to target with new drugs have thus far had little success. Other promising research is investigating triggerable local delivery systems for non-opioid nerve blockers, but it’s still in the early stages.
A new collaboration between Boston Children’s Hospital and the biopharmaceutical company Amgen is aimed at accelerating new pain treatments. Announced yesterday, it will revolve around patients with rare, perplexing pain syndromes. The scientists hope that the genetic variants they find in these patients will shed new light on pain biology and lead to new ways of controlling pain.…
Normal skull and brain venous development in a young child (courtesy Tischfield et al).
A recent study rocked the neuroscience world by demonstrating what in retrospect seems obvious: the brain has its own lymphatic system to help remove waste. A new study, from the laboratory of Elizabeth Engle, MD, at Boston Children’s Hospital, sheds light on another critical, little-studied part of the brain’s drainage system: the dural cerebral veins that remove and reabsorb excess cerebrospinal fluid.
The story of these vessels, the cover article in the next Developmental Cell, is a great example of lab scientists and physicians joining to make fundamental discoveries in biology. Strangely, critical clues come from children with craniosynostosis, a congenital malformation in which the skull plates fuse together too early in prenatal development, resulting in abnormal head shapes and, often, neurologic complications. …
Disease phenotype of GAMOS patients. Left: Kidney cells show signs of nephrotic syndrome. Right: Anomalies in brain development
With the help of more than 100 clinical collaborators around the world, Friedhelm Hildebrandt, MD has received thousands of blood samples from patients with nephrotic syndrome. They have helped Hildebrandt’s lab determine several underlying causes of this serious kidney disorder, in which high levels of protein are expelled in the urine.
“Nephrotic syndrome is not one disease; in fact, we already know that it is 55 different diseases,” says Hildebrandt, chief of the Division of Nephrology at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Over the course of time, Hildebrandt’s lab has discovered 35 of the more than 55 genes that can cause nephrotic syndrome. Identifying the different genetic pieces of the puzzle can help tailor a precision medicine approach to treating patients.
The latest piece, published earlier this month in Nature Genetics, is a set of four single-gene mutations that cause Galloway-Mowat syndrome (GAMOS) a rare disorder causing early-onset nephrotic syndrome and, often, microcephaly (abnormally small head size). Until now, the genetic changes underlying GAMOS and why they affect two disparate organs — the brain and kidney — have not been well understood. …
Right now, there are about 7,000 rare diseases affecting 10 percent of Americans. Only five percent of these diseases have any FDA-approved treatment options.
Panelists:
David Williams, MD: President, Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center; Senior VP, Chief Scientific Officer and Chief of Hematology/Oncology, Boston Children’s
Wayne Lencer, MD: Chief of Gastroenterology, Hematology and Nutrition, Boston Children’s
Even at a place like Boston Children’s Hospital, where doctors regularly see children with rare diseases from all over the world, there are big challenges when it comes to drug discovery and treatment.
“Roughly 70 percent of drugs to treat children are used off-label,” says David Williams, Boston Children’s chief scientific officer. “That’s because these drugs were initially developed for adults and have not been tested formally in children.”
In order to cure rare diseases in children and adults, scientists must bridge the gap between research and industry. On May 25, Boston Children’s Technology and Innovation Development Office (TIDO) and MassBio held a candid panel discussion about what it will take to advance the development of rare disease therapies. Here are three of the biggest takeaways …
Sturge-Weber syndrome causes capillary malformations in the brain. They occur in the brain’s leptomeninges, which comprise the arachnoid mater and pia mater.
A person born with a port-wine birthmark on his or her face and eyelid(s) has an 8 to 15 percent chance of being diagnosed with Sturge-Weber syndrome. The rare disorder causes malformations in certain regions of the body’s capillaries (small blood vessels). Port-wine birthmarks appear on areas of the face affected by these capillary malformations.
Aside from the visible symptoms of Sturge-Weber, there are also some more subtle and worrisome ones. Sturge-Weber syndrome can be detected by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Such images can reveal a telltale series of malformed capillaries in regions of the brain. Brain capillary malformations can have potentially devastating neurological consequences, including epileptic seizures.
Frustratingly, since doctors first described Sturge-Weber syndrome over 100 years ago, the relationship between brain capillary malformations and seizures has remained somewhat unexplained. In 2013, a Johns Hopkins University team found a GNAQ R183Q gene mutation in about 90 percent of sampled Sturge-Weber patients. However, the mutation’s effect on particular cells and its relationship to seizures still remained unknown.
But recently, some new light has been shed on the mystery. At Boston Children’s Hospital, Sturge-Weber patients donated their brain tissue to research after it was removed during a drastic surgery to treat severe epilepsy. An analysis of their tissue, funded by Boston Children’s Translational Neuroscience Center (TNC), has revealed the cellular location of the Sturge-Weber mutation. The discovery brings new hope of finding ways to improve the lives of those with the disorder. …
Talia Duff’s disorder, CMT4J, is a rare form of Charcot-Marie-Tooth. It has been modeled in mice that will soon undergo a test of gene therapy, largely through her parents’ behind-the-scenes work.
In honor of Rare Disease Day (Feb. 28), we salute “citizen scientists” Jocelyn and John Duff.
When Talia Duff was born, her parents realized life would be different, but still joyful. They were quickly adopted by the Down syndrome parent community and fell in love with Talia and her bright smile.
But when Talia was about four, it was clear she had a true problem. She started losing strength in her arms and legs. When she got sick, which was often, the weakness seemed to accelerate.
Talia was initially diagnosed with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy (CIDP), an autoimmune disease in which the body attacks its own nerve fibers. Treated with IV immunoglobulin infusions to curb the inflammation, she seemed to grow stronger — but only for a time. Adding prednisone, a steroid, seemed to help. But it also caused bone loss, and Talia began having spine fractures.
“We tried a lot of different things, but she never got 100 percent better,” says Regina Laine, NP, who has been following Talia in Boston Children’s Hospital’s Neuromuscular Center the past several years, together with Basil Darras, MD. “That’s when we decided to readdress the possibility that it was genetic.” …
The global theme of this year’s Rare Disease Day (February 28) is research, and in keeping with that, we salute a very important group of people: citizen scientists. These can-do patients and family members are putting previously undiagnosed rare diseases on the map and driving the search for treatments. Citizen scientists play multiple roles: They keep scientists focused on therapeutic development, conduct online research to connect ideas, set up patient networks and data registries, raise money and start companies. They’ve earned a voice in clinical trial design and were instrumental in the passage of the 21st Century Cures Act.
Meet a few citizen scientists who have inspired us recently. …
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