Efficient Skipping of Single Exon Duplications in DMD Patient-Derived Cell Lines Using an Antisense Oligonucleotide Approach

Background: Exon skipping strategies in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) have largely been directed toward altering splicing of exons flanking out-of-frame deletions, with the goal of restoring an open mRNA reading frame that leads to production of an internally deleted but partially functional dystrophin protein. Objective: We sought to apply exon skipping to duplication mutations, assuming that the inherently limited efficiency of antisense oligonucleotide-induced exon skipping would more frequently skip a single copy of a duplicated exon, rather than both and result in significant amounts of wild-type DMD mRNA. Methods: We tested this hypothesis in fibroblast cell lines derived from patients with a variety of single or multiple exon duplications that have been modified to allow transdifferentiation into a myogenic lineage. Results: Using a variety of 2’O-methyl antisense oligonucleotides, significant skipping was induced for each duplication leading to a wild-type transcript as a major mRNA product. Conclusions: This study provides another proof of concept for the feasibility of therapeutic skipping in patients carrying exon duplications in order to express wild-type, full-length mRNA, although careful evaluation of the skipping efficiency should be performed as some exons are easier to skip than others. Such a personalized strategy is expected to be highly beneficial for this subset of DMD patients, compared to inducing expression of an internally-deleted dystrophin.