Antisense-Mediated Skipping of Dysferlin Exons in Control and Dysferlinopathy Patient-Derived Cells

Dysferlinopathies encompass a spectrum of progressive muscular dystrophies caused by the lack of dysferlin due to missense mutations in the dysferlin gene or mutations causing premature truncation of protein translation. Dysferlin is a modular protein, and dysferlins lacking one or more repetitive domains have been shown to retain functionality. As such, antisense-mediated exon skipping has been proposed as a therapy for dysferlinopathy. By skipping the mutated exon, the reading frame would be maintained, while the mutation would be bypassed, thus allowing production of an internally deleted, but partially functional, dysferlin. We previously showed that dysferlin exon skipping is feasible in control cell lines. We here evaluated exon skipping and dysferlin protein restoration in patient-derived cells requiring the skipping of exon 9, 29, 30, or 34. Exon 30 skipping was possible at high efficiency, but did not result in increased dysferlin. We discovered that the alleged exon 30 mutation was in fact a polymorphism and identified a splicing mutation in intron 28 as the disease-causing mutation. While exon skipping was feasible for each of the other cell lines, no increases in dysferlin protein could be detected by western blotting.