Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 7, 2026
Generation of Native, Untagged Huntingtin Exon1 Monomer and Fibrils Using a SUMO Fusion Strategy
Published on: June 27, 2018
Ultrasensitive measurement of huntingtin protein in cerebrospinal fluid demonstrates increase with Huntington disease
Amber L Southwell1, Stephen E P Smith2, Tessa R Davis2
1Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics, Child and Family Research Institute, and Department of Medical Genetics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V5Z 4H4; Canada.
Abstract:
Quantitation of huntingtin protein in the brain is needed, both as a marker of Huntington disease (HD) progression and for use in clinical gene silencing trials. Measurement of huntingtin in cerebrospinal fluid could be a biomarker of brain huntingtin, but traditional protein quantitation methods have failed to detect huntingtin in cerebrospinal fluid. Using micro-bead based immunoprecipitation and flow cytometry (IP-FCM), we have developed a highly sensitive mutant huntingtin detection assay. The sensitivity of huntingtin IP-FCM enables accurate detection of mutant huntingtin protein in the cerebrospinal fluid of HD patients and model mice, demonstrating that mutant huntingtin levels in cerebrospinal fluid reflect brain levels, increasing with disease stage and decreasing following brain huntingtin suppression. This technique has potential applications as a research tool and as a clinical biomarker.
