High-throughput Screening with Pluripotent Stem Cells Identifies CUDC-907 as an Effective Compound for Restoring the Proinflammatory Phenotype of Nakajo-Nishimura Syndrome

Nakajo-Nishimura syndrome (NNS) is an autoinflammatory disorder caused by a homozygous mutations in PSMB8 gene. The administration of systemic corticosteroids is partially effective, but continuous treatment causes severe side effects. We previously established a pluripotent stem cell (PSC)-derived NNS disease model that reproduces several inflammatory phenotypes including the overproduction of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) and interferon gamma-induced protein-10 (IP-10). Here we performed high-throughput compound screening (HTS) using this PSC-derived NNS model to find potential therapeutic candidates and identified CUDC-907 as an effective inhibitor of the release of MCP-1 and IP-10. CUDC-907 did not induce cell death within therapeutic concentrations and was also effective on primary patient cells. Further analysis indicated that the inhibitory effect was post-transcriptional. These findings suggest that HTS with PSC-derived disease models is useful for finding drug candidates for autoinflammatory diseases. Significance statementIn this study, we identified a histone deacetylase inhibitor CUDC-907 as a potential effective compound for ameliorating overproduction of inflammatory chemokines in an autoinflammatory disease named Nakajo-Nishimura syndrome. We performed high-throughput screening using pluripotent stem cell-derived monocytic cell lines. Our data prove the validity of screening system as a versatile platform for seeking candidate compounds for the treatment of congenital immunological disorders associated with monocytic lineage cells.