ESPE Abstracts

Here we identified and characterized a heterozygous tandem duplication at the ASIP (agouti-signaling protein) gene locus causing ubiquitous, ectopic ASIP expression in a female index patient with extreme childhood obesity. In patient-derived adipose tissue samples, we observed pronounced differentiation of stroma-vascular fraction (SVF) cells into adipocytes in the patient compared to normal control cells. We further found reduced mitochondrial maximum respiration, spare capacity, and proton leak in the patient’s SVF cells as proxies for reduced energy expenditure. By transcriptome screen, we identified overexpression of one single gene, ASIP. We found and functionally confirmed a chromosomal rearrangement at the ASIP locus, that places ASIP under control of the ubiquitously active itchy E3 ubiquitin protein ligase (ITCH) promoter. The patient's phenotype of early-onset obesity, overgrowth, red hair, and hyperinsulinemia is concordant with that of mutant, so called agouti mice ubiquitously expressing the homolog nonagouti. Physiologically, ASIP antagonises the melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R) in the skin. Due to its homology to the hypothalamic regulator of eating behaviour agouti-related protein (AgRP), we hypothesize that ectopic ASIP similarly influences eating behaviour via repressing melanocyte-stimulating hormone-mediated activation of MC4R and that the mutation might therefore represent a novel monogenic cause for severe childhood obesity. We show that the tandem duplication results in the ectopic generation of ASIP in patient-derived native stroma-vascular fraction (SVF) cells, adipocytes and blood cells as well as in induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) generated from SVF cells of the patient, thus indicating ubiquitous ectopic ASIP expression. This overexpression persisted after differentiation of iPSCs into the three germ layers, mesoderm, ectoderm and endoderm, and after differentiation into hypothalamic-like neurons. Furthermore, we observed that ASIP causes a reduction of MC4R activity in vitro supporting the hypothesis that the obesity phenotype of our patient is caused by ectopic ASIP acting at the MC4R in the hypothalamus. Since the type of mutation escapes standard genetic screening algorithms, we rescreened the Leipzig childhood obesity cohort of 1745 patients and identified four additional patients with the identical mutation, ectopic ASIP expression and a similar phenotype. Taken together, our data indicate that ubiquitous ectopic ASIP expression is likely a monogenic cause of human obesity and might be potentially treatable with melanocortin 4 receptor agonists.