Harnessing Bone-Liver Crosstalk: A Dual-Action LYTAC Approach for Bone-Specific Accumulation and Liver-Specific Protein Degradation in Bone Disorders

Despite significant progress in extracellular targeted protein degradation (eTPD), existing approaches rarely achieved tissue-specific drug accumulation while maintaining efficient systemic clearance, a critical challenge in treating bone disorders. In this study, we introduced GalNAc-Apc001, a novel aptamer-based lysosome-targeting chimera (LYTAC) that uniquely combined bone-specific retention with hepatocyte-mediated clearance through a spatiotemporally controlled mechanism. By conjugating a tri-N-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc) moiety to a bone-homing sclerostin aptamer (Apc001), we engineered a bifunctional molecule capable of accumulating in bone via hydroxyapatite binding, capturing circulating sclerostin with high affinity and directing it to hepatocytes for ASGPR-mediated lysosomal degradation. In the absence of ASGPR-positive cells, GalNAc-Apc001 functioned via the conventional aptamer mechanism of binding inhibition, demonstrating efficacy comparable to that of Apc001 but notably lower than that of a sclerostin antibody. However, in ASGPR-positive cell coculture systems, GalNAc-Apc001 achieved a 40% greater activation of the Wnt signaling pathway compared to the sclerostin antibody, effectively reversing sclerostin-mediated inhibition (96 vs 60% recovery). Pharmacologically, GalNAc-Apc001 exhibited superior therapeutic efficacy by mitigating the suppressive effects of sclerostin on Wnt signaling, upregulating bone formation markers, and enhancing bone mass in a Col1a2 ^+/G610C osteogenesis imperfecta mouse model. These findings provided compelling mechanistic evidence that the spatiotemporal control of protein degradation could resolve the inherent trade-off between tissue targeting and systemic clearance, supporting the clinical potential of GalNAc-Apc001 in bone disorders.