eprintid: 10168878 rev_number: 6 eprint_status: archive userid: 699 dir: disk0/10/16/88/78 datestamp: 2023-04-26 13:15:19 lastmod: 2023-04-26 13:15:19 status_changed: 2023-04-26 13:15:19 type: article metadata_visibility: show sword_depositor: 699 creators_name: Izco, Maria creators_name: Schleef, Martin creators_name: Schmeer, Marco creators_name: Carlos, Estefania creators_name: Verona, Guglielmo creators_name: Alvarez-Erviti, Lydia title: Targeted Extracellular Vesicle Gene Therapy for Modulating Alpha-Synuclein Expression in Gut and Spinal Cord ispublished: pub divisions: UCL divisions: B02 divisions: C10 divisions: D17 divisions: G90 keywords: Parkinson’s disease; alpha-synuclein; gene therapy; exosomes; spinal cord; intestine note: © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). abstract: The development of effective disease-modifying therapies to halt Parkinson’s disease (PD) progression is required. In a subtype of PD patients, alpha-synuclein pathology may start in the enteric nervous system (ENS) or autonomic peripheral nervous system. Consequently, strategies to decrease the expression of alpha-synuclein in the ENS will be an approach to prevent PD progression at pre-clinical stages in these patients. In the present study, we aimed to assess if anti-alpha-synuclein shRNA-minicircles (MC) delivered by RVG-extracellular vesicles (RVG-EV) could downregulate alpha-synuclein expression in the intestine and spinal cord. RVG-EV containing shRNA-MC were injected intravenously in a PD mouse model, and alpha-synuclein downregulation was evaluated by qPCR and Western blot in the cord and distal intestine. Our results confirmed the downregulation of alpha-synuclein in the intestine and spinal cord of mice treated with the therapy. We demonstrated that the treatment with anti-alpha-synuclein shRNA-MC RVG-EV after the development of pathology is effective to downregulate alpha-synuclein expression in the brain as well as in the intestine and spinal cord. Moreover, we confirmed that a multidose treatment is necessary to maintain downregulation for long-term treatments. Our results support the potential use of anti-alpha-synuclein shRNA-MC RVG-EV as a therapy to delay or halt PD pathology progression. date: 2023-04-13 date_type: published publisher: MDPI AG official_url: http://doi.org/10.3390/pharmaceutics15041230 oa_status: green full_text_type: pub language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 2017920 doi: 10.3390/pharmaceutics15041230 lyricists_name: Verona, Guglielmo lyricists_id: GVERO54 actors_name: Flynn, Bernadette actors_id: BFFLY94 actors_role: owner full_text_status: public publication: Pharmaceutics volume: 15 number: 4 article_number: 1230 issn: 1999-4923 citation: Izco, Maria; Schleef, Martin; Schmeer, Marco; Carlos, Estefania; Verona, Guglielmo; Alvarez-Erviti, Lydia; (2023) Targeted Extracellular Vesicle Gene Therapy for Modulating Alpha-Synuclein Expression in Gut and Spinal Cord. Pharmaceutics , 15 (4) , Article 1230. 10.3390/pharmaceutics15041230 <https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmaceutics15041230>. Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10168878/1/pharmaceutics-15-01230.pdf