Antisense oligonucleotides and short interfering RNAs silencing the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p21 improve proliferation of Duchenne muscular dystrophy patients' primary skeletal myoblasts

Increased levels of the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p21 associated with decreased myoblast proliferation may be involved in the dystrophic process in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Therefore we are interested to improve the proliferation of primary myoblasts of DMD patients by a reduction in p21 using either antisense oligonucleotides (ASO) or short interfering RNAs (siRNA). After transient transfection of myoblasts in cell culture proliferation was analyzed using a 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine assay comparing specific transfected cells with untransfected cells and cells transfected with scrambled ASO and luciferase siRNA, respectively. Four of five Dystrophin-deficient (Dys(-)) cell culture samples revealed an increase in proliferation between 7% and 18% compared to untransfected cells and between 8% and 36% compared to cells transfected with scrambled ASO. Transfection with siRNA was performed for selected samples to determine whether siRNA is more effective in gene silencing than ASO. The increase in proliferation using luciferase siRNA as reference was comparable to or less than ASO data using scrambled ASO as reference. Using untransfected cells as reference, the increase in proliferation was higher for siRNA than ASO (20-47% vs. 7-18%), but the data must be carefully interpreted with respect to nonspecific effects on gene expression by siRNA. Our findings of transient p21 gene silencing represent a basis for viral vector-mediated drug-inducible p21 shRNA expression in Dys(-) myoblasts which might enhance, prolong and regulate the proliferation effect.