ABSTRACT
The compound [5,10,15,20-tetrakis(4-fluoro-2,6-dimethylphenyl)porphyrinato]platinum(II), [Pt(C52H40F4N4)] or Pt(II)TFP, has been synthesized and structurally characterized by single-crystal X-ray crystallography. The Pt porphyrin exhibits a long-lived phosphorescent excited state (τ0 = 66â µs), which has been characterized by transient absorption and emission spectroscopy. The phosphorescence is extremely sensitive to oxygen, as reflected by a quenching rate constant of 5.0 × 108â M-1â s-1, and as measured by Stern-Volmer quenching analysis.
ABSTRACT
Splice-switching antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) could be used to treat a subset of individuals with genetic diseases1, but the systematic identification of such individuals remains a challenge. Here we performed whole-genome sequencing analyses to characterize genetic variation in 235 individuals (from 209 families) with ataxia-telangiectasia, a severely debilitating and life-threatening recessive genetic disorder2,3, yielding a complete molecular diagnosis in almost all individuals. We developed a predictive taxonomy to assess the amenability of each individual to splice-switching ASO intervention; 9% and 6% of the individuals had variants that were 'probably' or 'possibly' amenable to ASO splice modulation, respectively. Most amenable variants were in deep intronic regions that are inaccessible to exon-targeted sequencing. We developed ASOs that successfully rescued mis-splicing and ATM cellular signalling in patient fibroblasts for two recurrent variants. In a pilot clinical study, one of these ASOs was used to treat a child who had been diagnosed with ataxia-telangiectasia soon after birth, and showed good tolerability without serious adverse events for three years. Our study provides a framework for the prospective identification of individuals with genetic diseases who might benefit from a therapeutic approach involving splice-switching ASOs.