siRNA screen identifies QPCT as a druggable target for Huntington’s disease

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a currently incurable neurodegenerative condition caused by an abnormally expanded polyglutamine tract in huntingtin (HTT). We identified novel modifiers of mutant HTT toxicity by performing a large-scale “druggable genome” siRNA screen in human cultured cells, followed by hit validation in Drosophila. We focused on glutaminyl cyclase (QPCT), which had one of the strongest effects on mutant HTT-induced toxicity and aggregation in the cell-based siRNA screen, and which also rescued these phenotypes in Drosophila. We found that QPCT inhibition induced the levels of the molecular chaperone alpha B-crystallin and reduced the aggregation of diverse proteins. We generated novel QPCT inhibitors using in silico methods followed by in vitro screens, which rescued the HD-related phenotypes in cell, Drosophila and zebrafish HD models. Our data reveal a novel HD druggable target affecting mutant huntingtin aggregation, and provide proof-of-principle for a discovery pipeline from druggable genome screen to drug development.