[HTML][HTML] Chromothriptic cure of WHIM syndrome

DH McDermott, JL Gao, Q Liu, M Siwicki, C Martens… - Cell, 2015 - cell.com
DH McDermott, JL Gao, Q Liu, M Siwicki, C Martens, P Jacobs, D Velez, E Yim, CR Bryke…
Cell, 2015cell.com
Chromothripsis is a catastrophic cellular event recently described in cancer in which
chromosomes undergo massive deletion and rearrangement. Here, we report a case in
which chromothripsis spontaneously cured a patient with WHIM syndrome, an autosomal
dominant combined immunodeficiency disease caused by gain-of-function mutation of the
chemokine receptor CXCR4. In this patient, deletion of the disease allele, CXCR4 R334X,
as well as 163 other genes from one copy of chromosome 2 occurred in a hematopoietic …
Summary
Chromothripsis is a catastrophic cellular event recently described in cancer in which chromosomes undergo massive deletion and rearrangement. Here, we report a case in which chromothripsis spontaneously cured a patient with WHIM syndrome, an autosomal dominant combined immunodeficiency disease caused by gain-of-function mutation of the chemokine receptor CXCR4. In this patient, deletion of the disease allele, CXCR4R334X, as well as 163 other genes from one copy of chromosome 2 occurred in a hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) that repopulated the myeloid but not the lymphoid lineage. In competitive mouse bone marrow (BM) transplantation experiments, Cxcr4 haploinsufficiency was sufficient to confer a strong long-term engraftment advantage of donor BM over BM from either wild-type or WHIM syndrome model mice, suggesting a potential mechanism for the patient's cure. Our findings suggest that partial inactivation of CXCR4 may have general utility as a strategy to promote HSC engraftment in transplantation.
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