2. Academic Validation
  3. TECRL, a new life-threatening inherited arrhythmia gene associated with overlapping clinical features of both LQTS and CPVT

TECRL, a new life-threatening inherited arrhythmia gene associated with overlapping clinical features of both LQTS and CPVT

  • EMBO Mol Med. 2016 Dec 1;8(12):1390-1408. doi: 10.15252/emmm.201505719.
Harsha D Devalla 1,  Roselle Gélinas 2 3,  Elhadi H Aburawi 4,  Abdelaziz Beqqali 5,  Philippe Goyette 2,  Christian Freund 6 7,  Marie-A Chaix 2 3,  Rafik Tadros 2 3 5,  Hui Jiang 8 9 10,  Antony Le Béchec 11,  Jantine J Monshouwer-Kloots 6,  Tom Zwetsloot 6,  Georgios Kosmidis 6,  Frédéric Latour 2,  Azadeh Alikashani 2,  Maaike Hoekstra 5,  Jurg Schlaepfer 12,  Christine L Mummery 6,  Brian Stevenson 11,  Zoltan Kutalik 11 13,  Antoine Af de Vries 14 15,  Léna Rivard 2 3,  Arthur Am Wilde 16 17,  Mario Talajic 2 3,  Arie O Verkerk 5,  Lihadh Al-Gazali 4,  John D Rioux 18 3,  Zahurul A Bhuiyan 19,  Robert Passier 1 20
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Department of Anatomy & Embryology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands h.d.devalla@lumc.nl john.david.rioux@umontreal.ca z.a.bhuiyan@chuv.ch r.passier@lumc.nl.
  • 2 Montreal Heart Institute, Montreal, QC, Canada.
  • 3 Department of Medicine, Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada.
  • 4 Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, UAE University, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates.
  • 5 Heart Failure Research Center, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
  • 6 Department of Anatomy & Embryology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands.
  • 7 Leiden University Medical Center hiPSC Core Facility, Leiden, The Netherlands.
  • 8 Beijing Genomics Institute, Shenzhen, China.
  • 9 Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Genomics, Shenzhen, China.
  • 10 The Guangdong Enterprise Key Laboratory of Human Disease Genomics, Shenzhen, China.
  • 11 Vital-IT group, Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Lausanne, Switzerland.
  • 12 Service de Cardiologie, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), Lausanne, Switzerland.
  • 13 Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University Hospital (CHUV) and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
  • 14 Laboratory of Experimental Cardiology, Department of Cardiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands.
  • 15 ICIN-Netherlands Heart Institute, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
  • 16 Heart Center, Department of Clinical and Experimental Cardiology, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
  • 17 Princess Al-Jawhara Al-Brahim Centre of Excellence in Research of Hereditary Disorders, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
  • 18 Montreal Heart Institute, Montreal, QC, Canada h.d.devalla@lumc.nl john.david.rioux@umontreal.ca z.a.bhuiyan@chuv.ch r.passier@lumc.nl.
  • 19 Laboratoire Génétiqué Moléculaire, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), Lausanne, Switzerland h.d.devalla@lumc.nl john.david.rioux@umontreal.ca z.a.bhuiyan@chuv.ch r.passier@lumc.nl.
  • 20 Department of Applied Stem Cell Technologies, MIRA Institute for Biomedical Technology and Technical Medicine, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands.
PMID: 27861123 DOI: 10.15252/emmm.201505719
Abstract

Genetic causes of many familial arrhythmia syndromes remain elusive. In this study, whole-exome Sequencing (WES) was carried out on patients from three different families that presented with life-threatening arrhythmias and high risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD). Two French Canadian probands carried identical homozygous rare variant in TECRL gene (p.Arg196Gln), which encodes the trans-2,3-enoyl-CoA reductase-like protein. Both patients had cardiac arrest, stress-induced atrial and ventricular tachycardia, and QT prolongation on adrenergic stimulation. A third patient from a consanguineous Sudanese family diagnosed with catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (CPVT) had a homozygous splice site mutation (c.331+1G>A) in TECRL Analysis of intracellular calcium ([CA2+]i) dynamics in human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) generated from this individual (TECRLHom-hiPSCs), his heterozygous but clinically asymptomatic father (TECRLHet-hiPSCs), and a healthy individual (CTRL-hiPSCs) from the same Sudanese family, revealed smaller [CA2+]i transient amplitudes as well as elevated diastolic [CA2+]i in TECRLHom-hiPSC-CMs compared with CTRL-hiPSC-CMs. The [CA2+]i transient also rose markedly slower and contained lower sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) calcium stores, evidenced by the decreased magnitude of caffeine-induced [CA2+]i transients. In addition, the decay phase of the [CA2+]i transient was slower in TECRLHom-hiPSC-CMs due to decreased SERCA and NCX activities. Furthermore, TECRLHom-hiPSC-CMs showed prolonged action potentials (APs) compared with CTRL-hiPSC-CMs. TECRL knockdown in control human embryonic stem cell-derived CMs (hESC-CMs) also resulted in significantly longer APs. Moreover, stimulation by noradrenaline (NA) significantly increased the propensity for triggered activity based on delayed afterdepolarizations (DADs) in TECRLHom-hiPSC-CMs and treatment with flecainide, a class Ic antiarrhythmic drug, significantly reduced the triggered activity in these cells. In summary, we report that mutations in TECRL are associated with inherited arrhythmias characterized by clinical features of both LQTS and CPVT Patient-specific hiPSC-CMs recapitulated salient features of the clinical phenotype and provide a platform for drug screening evidenced by initial identification of flecainide as a potential therapeutic. These findings have implications for diagnosis and treatment of inherited cardiac arrhythmias.

Keywords

Arrhythmia; CPVT; LQTS; SRD5A2L2; iPSC.

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