Engineered human hepatocyte organoids enable CRISPR-based target discovery and drug screening for steatosis.
Delilah HendriksJos F BrouwersKarien HamerMaarten H GeurtsLéa LucianaSimone MassaliniCarmen López-IglesiasPeter J PetersMaria J Rodríguez-ColmanSusana M Chuva de Sousa LopesBenedetta ArtegianiHans CleversPublished in: Nature biotechnology (2023)
The lack of registered drugs for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is partly due to the paucity of human-relevant models for target discovery and compound screening. Here we use human fetal hepatocyte organoids to model the first stage of NAFLD, steatosis, representing three different triggers: free fatty acid loading, interindividual genetic variability (PNPLA3 I148M) and monogenic lipid disorders (APOB and MTTP mutations). Screening of drug candidates revealed compounds effective at resolving steatosis. Mechanistic evaluation of effective drugs uncovered repression of de novo lipogenesis as the convergent molecular pathway. We present FatTracer, a CRISPR screening platform to identify steatosis modulators and putative targets using APOB -/- and MTTP -/- organoids. From a screen targeting 35 genes implicated in lipid metabolism and/or NAFLD risk, FADS2 (fatty acid desaturase 2) emerged as an important determinant of hepatic steatosis. Enhancement of FADS2 expression increases polyunsaturated fatty acid abundancy which, in turn, reduces de novo lipogenesis. These organoid models facilitate study of steatosis etiology and drug targets.
Keyphrases
- fatty acid
- induced pluripotent stem cells
- high fat diet induced
- insulin resistance
- endothelial cells
- high fat diet
- genome wide
- small molecule
- high throughput
- pluripotent stem cells
- poor prognosis
- genome editing
- adipose tissue
- type diabetes
- dna methylation
- metabolic syndrome
- gene expression
- single cell
- binding protein
- copy number