Fanconi Anemia: A Paradigm for Understanding DNA Repair During Replication.
Authors: Smogorzewska Agata 
Published: November 2019

Fanconi anemia, the most common hereditary bone marrow failure disorder, results from defective repair of DNA interstrand crosslinks (ICLs), which covalently link complementary DNA strands causing replication stalling. Mutations in 22 different genes (FANCA-FANCW) have been shown to result in Fanconi anemia. Their protein products work at different stages of DNA repair leading to considerable heterogeneity in human phenotypes. The majority of the FANC gene mutations are recessively inherited with the exceptions of FANCB and FANCR/RAD51. FANCB is X-linked, and all FANCR/RAD51 mutations arise de novo, affect only one allele, and the mutant protein acts as a dominant negative against the wild type protein. Despite advances in the molecular diagnosis of Fanconi anemia, if Fanconi anemia is suspected, chromosome breakage (DEB or MMC) testing on patient cells is essential. We have seen a number of patients referred to the International Fanconi Anemia Registry (http://lab.rockefeller.edu/smogorzewska/ifar/) who are misdiagnosed with Fanconi anemia based solely on the presence of a FANC gene variant in gene panel or whole exome sequencing. Conversely, blood mosaicism may lead to a negative blood chromosome breakage test. If there is a high suspicion of Fanconi anemia, but blood breakage results are negative, breakage test on patient fibroblasts should be performed. Diagnosis of Fanconi anemia should also be entertained in young adults presenting with squamous cell carcinoma of the aerodigestive tract, since this may be their initial presentation of Fanconi anemia and conventional chemotherapy dose would precipitate bone marrow failure in these patients. In my talk, I will discuss the mechanism of the Fanconi anemia repair pathway during DNA replication. Then, I will concentrate on the mechanism of bone marrow failure and tumorigenesis in Fanconi anemia. I will explore the hypothesis that the endogenously produced aldehydes including some that are still unknown, contribute to disease development. Fanconi anemia-deficient hematopoietic stem cells have an autonomous DNA repair defect. Accumulation of DNA damage leads to apoptosis due to the activation of p53. If cells escape death, mutagenesis may lead to the development of leukemia. The sources of endogenous DNA damage are poorly understood. Cell cycle induction of Fanconi anemia pathway-deficientmouse hematopoietic stem cells results in DNA damage and bone marrow failure, which implies that the DNA lesions encountered during replication are the culprit. There is mounting evidence that the endogenous aldehydes, including acetaldehyde and formaldehyde,may cause those DNA lesions. To identify other metabolites that may induce bone marrow failure in Fanconi anemia, we used a library of CRISPR guides to target Cas9 to metabolic genes to screen for and identify synthetic lethality with Fanconi anemia deficiency. We have identifiedALDH9A1as the most significantly depleted gene in FANCD2-/- cells. The synthetically lethal interaction was validated using single gene editing in human umbilical cord-derived hematopoietic stem progenitor cells. We propose a model in which aldehydes that are metabolized by ALDH9A1 accumulate in the absence of this enzyme and cause DNA damage that requires the Fanconi anemia pathway proteins for repair, survival, and suppression of tumorigenesis. We are testing this model using Fanca-/-Aldh9a1-/-mice.

Disclosures

No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.