Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS) and
supravalvular aortic stenosis (SVAS) are genetic syndromes marked by the propensity to develop severe vascular
stenoses. Vascular lesions in both syndromes are caused by haploinsufficiency of the
elastin gene. We used these distinct genetic syndromes as models to evaluate the feasibility of using engineered zinc-finger
protein transcription factors (ZFPs) to achieve compensatory expression of haploinsufficient genes by inducing augmented expression from the remaining wild-type allele. For complex genes with multiple splice variants, this approach could have distinct advantages over
cDNA-based gene replacement strategies. Targeting the
elastin gene, we show that transcriptional activation by engineered ZFPs can induce compensatory expression from the wild-type allele in the setting of classic WBS and SVAS genetic mutations, increase
elastin expression in wild-type cells, induce expression of the major
elastin splice variants, and recapitulate their natural stoichiometry. Further, we establish that transcriptional activation of the mutant allele in SVAS does not overcome nonsense-mediated decay, and thus ZFP-mediated transcriptional activation is not likely to induce production of a
mutant protein, a crucial consideration. Finally, we show in bioengineered blood vessels that ZFP-mediated induction of
elastin expression is capable of stimulating functional elastogenesis. Haploinsufficiency is a common mechanism of
genetic disease. These findings have significant implications for WBS and SVAS, and establish that haploinsufficiency can be overcome by targeted transcriptional activation without inducing
protein expression from the mutant allele.