huABCA4-c.5461-10T>C Mouse

Stargardt Disease (STGD) is a hereditary macular dystrophy marked by yellowish fusiform spots in the retinal pigment epithelium, leading to macular atrophy. It primarily affects children and adolescents, causing progressive central vision loss and mild color vision impairment. The fundus may show pale yellow lesions with gold foil-like reflections and yellow-white spots around the posterior pole. Advanced stages involve atrophy of the retinal pigment epithelium, photoreceptor cells, and choriocapillaris. STGD is also common in sporadic cases and more frequent in children of consanguineous marriages. It affects both eyes bilaterally and progresses synchronously without significant gender differences, with an incidence of approximately 1/8000 to 1/13000. STGD is an autosomal recessive retinal disease caused by ABCA4 gene mutations, accounting for 95% of cases.

The ABCA4 gene encodes a retina-specific ABC transporter protein that removes retinal derivatives and toxic metabolites after rhodopsin photobleaching. Mutations in ABCA4 lead to the accumulation of these substances, causing apoptosis of retinal pigment epithelial and photoreceptor cells, resulting in retinal degenerative diseases. ABCA4 mutations are linked to Stargardt Disease (STGD), Cone-rod Dystrophy (CRD), and Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP). The clinical phenotype depends on the extent of ABCA4 mutations, with severe and mild mutations or two moderate mutations predisposing to STGD, and one moderate mutation predisposing to CRD ^[2-4].

Currently, the drug pipeline for treating Stargardt disease (STGD) primarily focuses on supplemental delivery methods for ABCA4-targeted drugs. Among them, ProQR has developed a therapeutic antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) drug, QR-1011, which targets the c.5461-10T>C mutation ^[1]. Most ASO medicines and gene therapies act on the human ABCA4 gene. Considering the genetic differences between animals and humans, modifying mouse genes to be more human-like would help accelerate gene therapies targeting ABCA4 into the clinical stage.

The huABCA4-c.5461-10T>C mouse is a humanized model of the Abca4 gene, where the mouse Abca4 gene has been replaced with the human ABCA4 gene carrying the c.5461-10T>C mutation using gene editing technology. This model can be used for research on various retinal degeneration diseases such as Stargardt disease (STGD), cone-rod dystrophy (CRD), and retinitis pigmentosa (RP). In addition, based on the independently developed TurboKnockout fusion BAC recombination technology, Cyagen can also provide customized services for specific mutations to meet the experimental needs in pharmacology and other fields.