NR as a Promising Therapeutic Candidate for Alpers' Disease

Alpers' disease is both a neurodegenerative disorder and a metabolic disorder, which is tightly linked to mitochondrial dysfunction and mutations in the catalytic subunit of polymerase gamma (POLG) gene. Noteworthily, supplementation of NAD precursor, nicotinamide riboside (NR), is evidenced to explicitly ameliorate mitochondrial defects in cortical organoids of patients with Alpers' disease.

Alpers’ disease is an autosomal recessive disorder, which is often accompanied with cortical neuronal loss as well as depletion of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and complex I (CI). The disease occurs in about 1 in 100,000 newborns. Most individuals with Alpers’ disease show no symptoms at birth. Diagnosis is generally established by determining the POLG gene. Once onset (usually between first and third years of life), patients may present the symptoms such as progressive encephalopathy, epilepsy, myoclonus, and myasthenia gravis. Currently, there is no effective method to cure this disease.

Long-term treatment with NR partially ameliorates the neurodegenerative alterations observed in Alpers' cortical organoids. Specifically, supplementation of NR effectively counteracts neuronal loss, glial enrichment, and mitochondrial damage observed in cortical organoids of patients with Alpers' disease.

NR treatment offsets the downregulation of mitochondrial  and synaptogenesis-related pathways, as well as upregulation of pathways associated with astrocyte/glial cells and neuroinflammation are obviously activated in Alpers' cortical organoids.

Replenishment of NR to increase NAD level can rescue mitochondrial defects and neuronal loss in iPSC-derived cortical organoid of Alpers’ disease, with relatively high safety and bioavailability, showing great promise as a therapeutic candidate for this intractable disorder.

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