Rap-011 rescues the disease phenotype in a cellular model of congenital dyserythropoietic anemia type ii by inhibiting the smad2-3 pathway

Congenital dyserythropoietic anemia type II (CDA II) is a hypo-productive anemia defined by ineffective erythropoiesis through maturation arrest of erythroid precursors. CDA II is an autosomal recessive disorder due to loss-of-function mutations in SEC23B. Currently, management of patients with CDA II is based on transfusions, splenectomy, or hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation. Several studies have highlighted benefits of ACE-011 (sotatercept) treatment of ineffective erythropoiesis, which acts as a ligand trap against growth differentiation factor (GDF)11. Herein, we show that GDF11 levels are increased in CDA II, which suggests sotatercept as a targeted therapy for treatment of these patients. Treatment of stable clones of SEC23B-silenced erythroleukemia K562 cells with the iron-containing porphyrin hemin plus GDF11 increased expression of pSMAD2 and reduced nuclear localization of the transcription factor GATA1, with subsequent reduced gene expression of erythroid differentiation markers. We demonstrate that treatment of these SEC23B-silenced K562 cells with RAP-011, a “murinized” ortholog of sotatercept, rescues the disease phenotype by restoring gene expression of erythroid markers through inhibition of the phosphorylated SMAD2 pathway. Our data also demonstrate the effect of RAP-011 treatment in reducing the expression of erythroferrone in vitro, thus suggesting a possible beneficial role of the use of sotatercept in the management of iron overload in patients with CDA II.