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Transgenic rat model of Huntington's disease

von Horsten, S., Schmitt, I., Nguyen, H. P., Holzmann, C., Schmidt, T., Walther, T., Bader, M., Pabst, R., Kobbe, P., Krotova, J., Stiller, D., Kask, A., Vaarmann, A., Rathke-Hartlieb, S., Schulz, J. B., Grasshoff, U., Bauer, I., Vieira-Saecker, A. M. M., Paul, M., Jones, Lesley ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3007-4612, Lindenberg, K. S., Landwehrmeyer, B., Bauer, A., Li, X.-J. and Riess, O. 2003. Transgenic rat model of Huntington's disease. Human Molecular Genetics 12 (6) , pp. 617-624. 10.1093/hmg/ddg075

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Abstract

Huntington's disease (HD) is a late manifesting neurodegenerative disorder in humans caused by an expansion of a CAG trinucleotide repeat of more than 39 units in a gene of unknown function. Several mouse models have been reported which show rapid progression of a phenotype leading to death within 3-5 months (transgenic models) resembling the rare juvenile course of HD (Westphal variant) or which do not present with any symptoms (knock-in mice). Owing to the small size of the brain, mice are not suitable for repetitive in vivo imaging studies. Also, rapid progression of the disease in the transgenic models limits their usefulness for neurotransplantation. We therefore generated a rat model transgenic of HD, which carries a truncated huntingtin cDNA fragment with 51 CAG repeats under control of the native rat huntingtin promoter. This is the first transgenic rat model of a neurodegenerative disorder of the brain. These rats exhibit adult-onset neurological phenotypes with reduced anxiety, cognitive impairments, and slowly progressive motor dysfunction as well as typical histopathological alterations in the form of neuronal nuclear inclusions in the brain. As in HD patients, in vivo imaging demonstrates striatal shrinkage in magnetic resonance images and a reduced brain glucose metabolism in high-resolution fluor-deoxy-glucose positron emission tomography studies. This model allows longitudinal in vivo imaging studies and is therefore ideally suited for the evaluation of novel therapeutic approaches such as neurotransplantation.

Item Type: Article
Status: Published
Schools: MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics (CNGG)
Medicine
Subjects: R Medicine > R Medicine (General)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISSN: 0964-6906
Last Modified: 04 Mar 2023 03:02
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/82519

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