TDP-43 cytoplasmic inclusion formation is disrupted in C9orf72-associated amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/frontotemporal lobar degeneration

The G4C2 hexanucleotide repeat expansion mutation in the C9orf72 gene is the most common genetic cause underlying both amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia. Pathologically, these two neurodegenerative disorders are linked by the common presence of abnormal phosphorylated TDP-43 neuronal cytoplasmic inclusions. We compared the number and size of phosphorylated TDP-43 inclusions and their morphology in hippocampi from patients dying with sporadic versus C9orf72-related amyotrophic lateral sclerosis with pathologically defined frontotemporal lobar degeneration with phosphorylated TDP-43 inclusions, the pathological substrate of clinical frontotemporal dementia in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In sporadic cases, there were numerous consolidated phosphorylated TDP-43 inclusions that were variable in size, whereas inclusions in C9orf72 amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/frontotemporal lobar degeneration were quantitatively smaller than those in sporadic cases. Also, C9orf72 amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/frontotemporal lobar degeneration homogenized brain contained soluble cytoplasmic TDP-43 that was largely absent in sporadic cases. To better understand these pathological differences, we modelled TDP-43 inclusion formation in fibroblasts derived from sporadic or C9orf72-related amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/frontotemporal dementia patients. We found that both sporadic and C9orf72 amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/frontotemporal dementia patient fibroblasts showed impairment in TDP-43 degradation by the proteasome, which may explain increased TDP-43 protein levels found in both sporadic and C9orf72 amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/frontotemporal lobar degeneration frontal cortex and hippocampus. Fibroblasts derived from sporadic patients, but not C9orf72 patients, demonstrated the ability to sequester cytoplasmic TDP-43 into aggresomes via microtubule-dependent mechanisms. TDP-43 aggresomes in vitro and TDP-43 neuronal inclusions in vivo were both tightly localized with autophagy markers and, therefore, were likely to function similarly as sites for autophagic degradation. The inability for C9orf72 fibroblasts to form TDP-43 aggresomes, together with the observations that TDP-43 protein was soluble in the cytoplasm and formed smaller inclusions in the C9orf72 brain compared with sporadic disease, suggests a loss of protein quality control response to sequester and degrade TDP-43 in C9orf72-related diseases.