Jingmin Wang

Peking University First Hospital · Pediatrics

Introduction: Leukoencephalopathy with vanishing white matter (VWM) is a rare autosomal recessive leukoencephalopathy resulting from mutations in EIF2B1-5, which encode subunits of eukaryotic translation initiation factor 2B (eIF2B). Studies have found that eIF2B mutation has a certain influence on embryonic brain development. So far, the effect o...

Background The natural history and genotype–phenotype correlation of Pelizaeus–Merzbacher disease (PMD) of Chinese patients has been rarely reported. Method Patients who met the criteria for PMD were enrolled in our study. Genomic analysis was conducted by multiplex ligation probe amplification (MLPA) and Sanger or whole-exome sequencing (WES). Na...

Leukoencephalopathy with vanishing white matter (VWM) is an inherited leukoencephalopathy characterized by progressive rarefaction of cerebral white matter. Dysfunction of patient astrocyte plays a central role in the pathogenesis, while the immaturity of oligodendrocyte is probably secondary. How eIF2B mutant astrocytes affect the maturation and m...

A recent study in Brain¹ identified two homozygous missense variants in RNF220 [p.(R363Q) and p.(R365Q)] in five European pedigrees with ataxia, deafness, hypomyelinating leukodystrophy, liver dysfunction and dilated cardiomyopathy. The R365Q mutation was found in four families of Roma ethnic origin and proposed to be a founder mutation. However, h...

Neuroblastoma is a type of developmental childhood cancer that arises from the neural crest. It is the most common pediatric solid tumor in the world. AM580 is a powerful cyto-differentiating molecule on acute promyelocytic leukemia cells and induced pluripotent stem cells, but its effect on neuroblastoma is still unknown. In this study, the neuron...

Acitretin is an oral drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration that is commonly used to treat psoriasis. In recent years, acitretin has been identified as a candidate drug for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, but its role in neuronal development is still unclear. In this study, the human neuroblastoma cell line SH-SY5Y was used as a mo...

Whole-exome sequencing of two patients with idiopathic complex neurodevelopmental disorder (NDD) identified biallelic variants of unknown significance within FIBCD1, encoding an endocytic acetyl group-binding transmembrane receptor with no known function in the central nervous system. We found that FIBCD1 preferentially binds and endocytoses glycos...

Objective: To explore the clinical and genetic characteristics of three children with 22q13 deletion syndrome. Methods: Clinical data were collected and copy number variations in the patients and their parents were detected by using array-based comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) and copy number variation sequencing (CNV-seq). The DECIPHER,...

Background Intellectual disability/developmental delay (ID/DD) is a kind of neurodevelopmental disorders of which the genetic etiologies are to be clarified in majority of the patients. The features of ID/DD patients with hemizygous variants in ATRX in China remains unclear due to the rare reports in worldwide. Methods Clinical data of six Chinese...

Objective To study the burden of neurodevelopmental diseases (NDDs) via cost-of-illness analysis of Chinese patients with genetic diagnosis. Methods We recruited NDD patients (0–18 years old) with genetic diagnosis (GD) from September 1, 2020 to January 30, 2021. We gathered basic information on the details of diagnosis, as well as the direct medi...

Hypomyelinating leukodystrophies (HLDs) are a rare group of heterogeneously genetic disorders characterized by persistent deficit of myelin observed on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). To identify a new disease-associated gene of HLD, trio-based whole exome sequencing was performed for unexplained patients with HLD. Functional studies were perform...

Genome sequencing(GS) has been used in the diagnosis of global developmental delay(GDD)/intellectual disability(ID). However, the performance of GS in patients with inconclusive results from chromosomal microarray analysis(CMA) and exome sequencing(ES) is unknown. We recruited 100 pediatric GDD/ID patients from multiple sites in China from February...

Purpose: Leukoencephalopathy with vanishing white matter (VWM) is an autosomal recessive leukoencephalopathy caused by mutations in any of the five genes encoding the subunits of eukaryotic translation initiation factor 2B (eIF2B). The severity of the disease varies considerably, and its genotypic-phenotypic correlation is still unclear. Age of ons...

The brain extracellular matrix (ECM) is enriched in chondroitin sulphate proteoglycans (CSPGs) with variable sulphate modifications that intimately participate in brain maturation and function. Very little is known about how the changing biophysical properties of the CSPGs are signalled to neurons. Here, we report Fibrinogen C Domain Containing 1 (...

Among the hypomyelinating leukodystrophies, Pelizaeus–Merzbacher disease (PMD) is a representative disorder. The disease is caused by different types of PLP1 mutations, among which PLP1 duplication accounts for ∼70% of the mutations. Previous studies have shown that PLP1 duplications lead to PLP1 retention in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER); in para...

Introduction: 22q13.3 deletion syndrome is a well-known syndrome characterized by typical clinical findings including neonatal hypotonia, absent or severely delayed speech, intellectual disability, and other various features, and detection of a heterozygous deletion of chromosome 22q13.3 with the involvement of at least part of SHANK3. It is repor...

Background Overweight or obesity among pregnant women may compromise maternal and neonatal iron status by upregulating hepcidin. Objectives This study determined the association of 1) maternal and neonatal iron status with maternal and neonatal hepcidin concentrations, and 2) maternal prepregnancy weight status with maternal and neonatal hepcidin...

Hypomyelinating leukodystrophies (HLDs) are a rare group of disorders characterized by myelin deficit of the brain-based on MRI. Here, we studied 20 patients with unexplained HLD to uncover their genetic etiology through whole-exome sequencing (WES). Trio-based WES was performed for 20 unresolved HLDs families after genetic tests for the PLP1 dupli...

Among the hypomyelinating leukodystrophies, Pelizaeus–Merzbacher disease (PMD) is a representative disorder. The disease is caused by different types of PLP1 mutations, among which PLP1 duplication accounts for ~ 70% of the mutations. Previous studies have shown that PLP1 duplications lead to PLP1 retention in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER); in par...

Background Global developmental delay/intellectual disability (GDD/ID), used to be named as mental retardation (MR), is one of the most common phenotypes in neurogenetic diseases. In this study, we described the diagnostic courses, clinical and genetic characteristics and prenatal diagnosis of a cohort with patients presented GDD/ID with monogenic...

Background: The resurgence of Bordetella pertussis infections leading to whooping cough is a concern in many parts of the world. The number of pertussis cases in China has increased significantly since 2013. Research design and methods: In this study, whole-genome sequencing analysis was performed for 388 B. pertussis strains isolated in China f...

Objective: This study aimed to explore the efficacy and safety of pantethine in children with pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration (PKAN). Methods: A single-arm, open-label study was conducted. All subjects received pantethine during the 24-week period of treatment. The primary endpoints were change of the Unified Parkinson's Disease...

Background Epilepsy might be one of the manifestations in children with leukodystrophies, but the incidence of epilepsy in different types of leukodystrophies is unclear yet.MethodsA retrospective observational cohort study was performed on children diagnosed with leukodystrophies in Peking University First Hospital from January 2004 to June 2019,...

Background: The estimated worldwide prevalence of global developmental delay (GDD) and intellectual disability (ID) is 1-3%. Rare monogenic GDD/ID is poorly characterized because its low prevalence limits research. In this study, we aimed to describe the diagnostic courses and clinical and genetic characteristics of a cohort with rare monogenic GDD...

Background: Global developmental delay/intellectual disability (GDD/ID), used to be named as mental retardation (MR), is one of the most common phenotypes in neurogenetic diseases. In this study, we described the diagnostic courses, clinical and genetic characteristics and prenatal diagnosis of a cohort with patients presented GDD/ID with monogenic...

There has been one previous report of a cohort of patients with variants in Chromodomain Helicase DNA-binding 3 (CHD3), now recognized as Snijders Blok-Campeau syndrome. However, with only three previously-reported patients with variants outside the ATPase/helicase domain, it was unclear if variants outside of this domain caused a clinically simila...

Objective This study aimed to explore the efficacy and safety of pantethine in children with pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration (PKAN). Methods A single-arm, open-label study was conducted. All subjects received pantethine during the 24-week period of treatment. The primary endpoints were change of the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rati...

Objective This study aimed to explore the efficacy and safety of pantethine in children with pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration (PKAN). Methods A single-arm, open-label study was conducted. All subjects received pantethine during the 24-week period of treatment. The primary endpoints were change of the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rati...

Aims: To investigate the natural history and genotype-phenotype correlation of pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration. Methods: We collected data of patients with PKAN by searching from available publications in English and Chinese. Patients diagnosed in our center (Peking University First Hospital) were also included. The difference i...

CSNK2B, which encodes the beta subunit of casein kinase II (CK2), plays an important role in neuron morphology and synaptic transmission. Variants in CSNK2B associated with epilepsy and/or intellectual disability (ID)/developmental delay (DD) have been reported in five cases only. Among the 816 probands suspected hereditary epilepsy whose initial r...

Mechanically activated (MA) ion channels convert physical forces into electrical signals. Despite the importance of this function, the involvement of mechanosensitive ion channels in human disease is poorly understood. Here we report heterozygous missense mutations in the gene encoding the MA ion channel TMEM63A that result in an infantile disorder...

Mechanically activated (MA) ion channels convert physical forces into electrical signals. Despite the importance of this function, the involvement of mechanosensitive ion channels in human disease is poorly understood. Here we report heterozygous missense mutations in the gene encoding the MA ion channel TMEM63A that result in an infantile disorder...

Background Intellectual disability/developmental delay is a complex condition with extraordinary heterogeneity. A large proportion of patients lacks a specific diagnosis. Next generation sequencing, enabling identification of genetic variations in multiple genes, has become an efficient strategy for genetic analysis in intellectual disability/devel...

Background Brown-Vialetto-Van Laere Syndrome (BVVLS), a rare neurological disorder characterized by motor, sensory, and cranial neuronopathies, is mainly associated with defective riboflavin transporters encoded by SLC52A2 and SLC52A3 genes. Clinical outcomes have been shown to be improved significantly by high-dose riboflavin supplementation. The...

Congenital muscular dystrophies (CMDs) are clinically and genetically heterogeneous conditions. We launched a nationwide study to determine the frequency of CMD in the Chinese population and assess the status of diagnosis and disease management for CMD in China. Cases were chosen from databases in 34 tertiary academic hospitals from 29 first‐level...

To evaluate the additional diagnostic yield of whole exome sequencing (WES) reanalysis in patients with epilepsy and intellectual disability/mental retardation, we reanalyzed raw WES data and clinical information for 76 patient trios whose initial reports returned negative results. Eight patients (10.5%, 8/76) had positive genetic diagnoses finally...

Neurodevelopment is a transcriptionally orchestrated process. Cyclin K, a regulator of transcription encoded by CCNK, is thought to play a critical role in the RNA polymerase II-mediated activities. However, dysfunction of CCNK has not been linked to genetic disorders. In this study, we identified three unrelated individuals harboring de novo heter...

Objective Metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD) is an inherited disease caused by a deficiency of the enzyme arylsulfatase A (ARSA) that leads to severe physiologic and developmental problems. Our study is aimed at elucidating the clinical and genetic characteristics of Chinese MLD patients. Methods Clinical data of 21 MLD patients was collected. All...

Vanishing white matter disease (VWM) is one of the most prevalent inherited leukoencephalopathies in childhood. Infantile VWM is more severe but less understood than the classic early childhood type. We performed a follow-up study on 14 infantile and 26 childhood patients to delineate the natural history and neuroimaging features of VWM. Infantile...

Background Developmental delay (DD) and intellectual disability (ID) are frequently associated with a broad spectrum of additional phenotypes. Chromosomal microarray analysis (CMA) has been recommended as a first-tier test for DD/ID in general, whereas the diagnostic yield differs significantly among DD/ID patients with different comorbid condition...

Objective Hypomyelinating disorders are a group of clinically and genetically heterogeneous diseases characterized by neurological deterioration with hypomyelination visible on brain MRI scans. This study was aimed to clarify the clinical and genetic features of HMDs in Chinese population. Methods 119 patients with hypomyelinating disorders in Chi...

Comparison of the clinical manifestations between patients in the present study and other studies with POLR3A mutation. (XLSX)

The morbid genes affected in P119 with chromosomal 18q deletion. (XLSX)

Detailed clinical and genetic information of the 119 HMD patients recruited. (XLSX)

Detailed MRI information of 48 HMD patients over one year of age. (XLSX)

The information of pathologic validation for 18 novel variations in HMD patients. (XLSX)

The genotype and phenotype of PLP1 point mutations from 20 studies. (XLSX)

The information of conservation validation for 13 novel variations in HMD patients. (XLSX)

The results of lysosomal analysis for patients with GM1 and GM2 gangliosidosis. (XLSX)

The widespread application of next generation sequencing (NGS) in clinical settings has enabled testing, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of genetic diseases. However, many issues have arisen in the meanwhile. One of the most pressing issues is the lack of standards for reporting genetic test results across different service providers. The First...

Epilepsy is one of the most common complex neurological diseases. It is frequently associated with intellectual and developmental disabilities (ID/DD). In recent years, copy number variation (CNV), especially microdeletion, was proven to be a potential key factor of genetic epilepsy. In this paper, the authors tested the hypothesis that the large d...

Menkes disease (MD) is a fatal X-linked multisystem disease caused by mutations in ATP7A. In this study, clinical and genetic analysis was performed in 24 male MD patients. Development delay, seizures, kinky coarse hair, and dystonia were found in 24, 22, 24, and 24 patients, respectively. Serum ceruloplasmin/copper tested in 19 patients was low. A...

Background The unfolded protein response (UPR) includes three cascade pathways, which are responsible for the elimination of overload protein that is accumulated in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). We hypothesize that mutations in connexin 47 (Cx47) lead to abnormal retain of the protein in the ER lumen, which causes Pelizaeus–Merzbacher-like diseas...

IBA57 is involved in the biogenesis of mitochondrial [4Fe-4S] proteins. Eighteen cases with IBA57 mutations have been reported to date. We described a novel phenotype in 11 children with cavitating leukoencephalopathy and summarized the phenotypic spectrum of IBA57 mutations. The median age of onset was 9 months, with an initial presentation of mot...

Genomic disorders are the clinical conditions manifested by submicroscopic genomic rearrangements including copy number variants (CNVs). The CNVs can be identified by array-based comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH), the most commonly used technology for molecular diagnostics of genomic disorders. However, clinical aCGH only informs CNVs in the...

Objective: Megalencephalic leukoencephalopathy with subcortical cysts (MLC, OMIM 604004) is a rare neurological deterioration disease. We aimed to clarify clinical and genetic features of Chinese MLC patients. Methods: Clinical information and peripheral venous blood of 20 patients and their families were collected, Sanger-sequencing and Multipl...

Rare copy number variations (CNVs) are a known genetic etiology in neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD). Comprehensive CNV analysis was performed in 287 Chinese children with mental retardation and/or development delay (MR/DD) and their unaffected parents. When compared with 5,866 ancestry-matched controls, 11~12% more MR/DD children carried rare and...

Protein O-mannosyltransferase 1 (POMT1) is a glycosyltransferase involved in α-dystroglycan glycosylation. POMT1 mutations cause a wide spectrum of clinical conditions from Walker-Warburg syndrome (WWS), which involves muscle, eye and brain abnormalities, to mild forms of limb-girdle muscular dystrophy with mental retardation. We aimed to elucidate...

Background: Clinical and genetic features were analyzed in five pedigrees with Pelizaeus-Merzbacher-like disease (PMLD) to provide bases for genetic counseling and prenatal diagnosis. Methods: Clinical data including medical history, physical signs, and auxiliary examinations were collected from six patients and their family numbers in five pedi...

Objective: Epilepsy and intellectual/developmental disabilities (ID/DD) have a high rate of co-occurrence. Here, we investigated gene mutations in Chinese children with unexplained epilepsy and ID/DD. Methods: We used targeted next-generation sequencing to detect mutations within 300 genes related to epilepsy and ID/DD in 253 Chinese children wi...

Objective: Eukaryotic translation initiation factor 2B (eIF2B) is an essential factor for the initiation of protein synthesis. Mutations in eIF2B encoded by EIF2B1-5 cause a lethal leukoencephalopathy-vanishing white matter disease (VWM). Previous studies have suggested that an improper activated unfolded protein response (UPR) after endoplasmic r...

Fragile X syndrome is the most common genetic disorder of intellectual developmental disorder/mental retardation (IDD/MR). The prevalence of FXS in a Chinese IDD children seeking diagnosis/treatment in mainland China is unknown. Patients with unknown moderate to severe IDD were recruited from two children's hospitals. Informed consent was obtained...