Systematic Analysis of Chemical Modifications of Phosphorothioate Antisense Oligonucleotides that Modulate Their Innate Immune Response

While rare, some gapmer phosphorothioate (PS) antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) can induce a noncanonical TLR9-dependent innate immune response. In this study, we performed systematic analyses of the roles of PS ASO backbone chemistry, 2′ modifications, and sequence in PS ASO induced TLR9 signaling. We found that each of these factors can contribute to altering PS ASO induced TLR9 signaling, and in some cases the effects are quite dramatic. We also found that the positioning (5′ vs. 3′) of a particular backbone or 2′ modification within a PS ASO can affect its TLR9 signaling. Interestingly, medicinal chemical strategies that decrease TLR9 signaling for one sequence can have opposing effects on another sequence. Our results demonstrate that TLR9 signaling is highly PS ASO sequence dependent, the mechanism of which remains unknown. Despite this, we determined that placement of two mesyl phosphoramidate linkages within the PS ASO gap is the most promising strategy to mitigate PS ASO dependent TLR9 activation to enhance the therapeutic index and, therefore, further streamline PS ASO drug development.