Identical gene regulation patterns of triiodothyronine (T3) and selective thyroid hormone receptor modulator GC-1 [Affymetrix]

Synthetic selective thyroid hormone (TH) receptor (TR) modulators (STRMs) exhibit beneficial effects on dyslipidemias in animals and humans and reduce obesity, fatty liver and insulin resistance in preclinical animal models. STRMs differ from native THs in preferential binding to the TR subtype versus TR, increased uptake into liver and reduced uptake into other tissues. However, selective modulators of other nuclear receptors (NRs) exhibit important gene-selective actions which have been attributed to differential effects on receptor conformation and dynamics and these effects can have profound influences in animals and humans. While there are suggestions that STRMs could exhibit such gene-specific actions, the extent to which these effects are actually observed in vivo has not been explored. Here, we show that saturating concentrations of the main active form of TH, triiodothyronine (T3), and the prototype STRM GC-1 induce identical gene-sets in livers of euthyroid and hypothyroid mice and a human cultured hepatoma cell line that only expresses TR, HepG2. We find one case in which GC-1 exhibits a modest gene-specific reduction in potency versus T3, at angiopoietin-like factor 4 (ANGPTL4) in HepG2. Investigation of the latter effect confirms that GC-1 acts through TR to directly induce this gene. However, this gene-selective GC-1 activity is not related to unusual T3 response element (TRE) sequence, unlike previously documented promoter-selective STRM actions. Together, our data suggest that T3 and GC-1 exhibit almost identical gene regulation properties and that gene-selective actions of GC-1 and similar STRMs will be subtle and rare.

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Yuan C, Lin JZ, Sieglaff DH, Ayers SD, Denoto-Reynolds F, Baxter JD, Webb P