Catalytic antibodies in arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy patients cleave desmoglein 2 and N-cadherin and impair cardiomyocyte cohesion.

Aims: Arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (AC) is a severe heart disease predisposing to ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death caused by mutations affecting intercalated disc (ICD) proteins and aggravated by physical exercise. Recently, autoantibodies targeting ICD proteins, including the desmosomal cadherin desmoglein 2 (DSG2), were reported in AC patients and were considered relevant for disease development and progression, particularly in patients without underlying pathogenic mutations. However, it is unclear at present whether these autoantibodies are pathogenic and by which mechanisms show specificity for DSG2 and thus can be used as a diagnostic tool.

Methods And Results: IgG fractions were purified from 15 AC patients and 4 healthy controls. Immunostainings dissociation assays, atomic force microscopy (AFM), Western blot analysis and Triton X-100 assays were performed utilizing human heart left ventricle tissue, HL-1 cells and murine cardiac slices. Immunostainings revealed that autoantibodies against ICD proteins are prevalent in AC and most autoantibody fractions have catalytic properties and cleave the ICD adhesion molecules DSG2 and N-cadherin, thereby reducing cadherin interactions as revealed by AFM. Furthermore, most of the AC-IgG fractions causing loss of cardiomyocyte cohesion activated p38MAPK, which is known to contribute to a loss of desmosomal adhesion in different cell types, including cardiomyocytes. In addition, p38MAPK inhibition rescued the loss of cardiomyocyte cohesion induced by AC-IgGs.

Conclusion: Our study demonstrates that catalytic autoantibodies play a pathogenic role by cleaving ICD cadherins and thereby reducing cardiomyocyte cohesion by a mechanism involving p38MAPK activation. Finally, we conclude that DSG2 cleavage by autoantibodies could be used as a diagnostic tool for AC.