Insulin-Degrading Enzyme Efficiently Degrades polyQ Peptides but not Expanded polyQ Huntingtin Fragments

Huntington's disease is an inheritable autosomal dominant disorder caused by an expanded CAG trinucleotide repeat within the Huntingtin gene, leading to a polyglutamine (polyQ) expansion in the mutant protein.

A potential therapeutic approach for delaying or preventing the onset of the disease involves enhancing the degradation of the aggregation-prone polyQ-expanded N-terminal mutant huntingtin (mHTT) exon1 fragment. A few proteases and peptidases have been identified that are able to cleave polyQ fragments with low efficiency. This study aims to identify a potent polyQ-degrading endopeptidase.

Here we used quenched polyQ peptides to identify a polyQ-degrading endopeptidase. Next we investigated its role on HTT turnover, using purified polyQ-expanded HTT fragments and striatal cells expressing mHTT exon1 peptides.

We identified insulin-degrading enzyme (IDE) as a novel endopeptidase for degrading polyQ peptides. IDE was, however, ineffective in reducing purified polyQ-expanded HTT fragments. Similarly, in striatal cells expressing mHTT exon1 peptides, IDE did not enhance mHTT turnover.

This study shows that despite IDE's efficiency in degrading polyQ peptides, it does not contribute to the direct degradation of polyQ-expanded mHTT fragments.