Mechanisms of Erythropoietic Failure in Shwachman Diamond Syndrome Caused by Loss of Ribosome-Related Protein SBDS.

Abstract 3203

Poster Board III-140

Anemia occurs in 60% of patients with Shwachman Diamond Syndrome (SDS). Although bi-allelic mutations in SBDS cause SDS, it is unclear whether SBDS is critical for erythropoiesis and what the pathogenesis of anemia is in SDS. We hypothesize that SBDS protects early erythroid progenitors from apoptosis by promoting ribosome biosynthesis and translation. During early erythroid differentiation of human K562 cells and primary CD133+ cells, a prominent upregulation of SBDS by RT-qPCR was found. SBDS deficiency by vector-based shRNA led to impaired cell expansion of differentiating K562 cells due to accelerated apoptosis and a mild reduction in proliferation. Furthermore, the cells showed general reduction of 40S, 60S, 80S ribosomal subunits, loss of polysomes and impaired global translation during differentiation. Both cell expansion and translation defects were rescued upon re-introduction of SBDS in K562 cells. Interestingly, leucine partly corrected the cell expansion and translational defects of non-differentiating SBDS-deficient K562 cells, while differentiating SBDS-deficient K562 cells showed improved cell expansion in the presence of additional translation stimulators such as IGF-1. SBDS-knockdown CD133+ cells showed increased BFU-E colony formation under conditions with leucine and a combination of leucine and IGF-1 treatment. Although the erythroid cell expansion defect in K562 cells is independent of p53 as these cells do not express the gene, an upregulation of TAp73, was found in resting SBDS deficient K562 cells. However expression of TAp73 was lost during differentiation. DNp63 was also not upregulated in SBDS-deficient K562 erythroid cells. These results demonstrate that the role of SBDS in non-differentiated cells versus differentiated cells represents two dynamic scenarios and that SBDS plays a critical role in erythroid expansion by promoting survival of early erythroid progenitors and in maintaining ribosome biogenesis during erythroid maturation through a pathway independent of p53 family members.