Thursday, January 19, 2023

A wearable motion capture suit and machine learning predict disease progression in Friedreich’s ataxia

Balasundaram Kadirvelu, Constantinos Gavriel, Sathiji Nageshwaran, Jackson Ping Kei Chan, Suran Nethisinghe, Stavros Athanasopoulos, Valeria Ricotti, Thomas Voit, Paola Giunti, Richard Festenstein & A. Aldo Faisal; Nat Med (2023). doi:10.1038/s41591-022-02159-6

Our work demonstrates how data-derived wearable biomarkers can track personal disease trajectories and indicates the potential of such biomarkers for substantially reducing the duration or size of clinical trials testing disease-modifying therapies and for enabling behavioral transcriptomics.

Proprioceptors-enriched neuronal cultures from induced pluripotent stem cells from Friedreich ataxia patients show altered transcriptomic and proteomic profiles, abnormal neurite extension, and impaired electrophysiological properties

Chiara Dionisi, Marine Chazalon, Myriam Rai, Céline Keime, Virginie Imbault, David Communi, Hélène Puccio, Serge N Schiffmann, Massimo Pandolfo; Brain Communications, 2023;, fcad007, doi:10.1093/braincomms/fcad007 

 Our study suggests the existence of abnormalities affecting proprioceptors in Friedreich ataxia, particularly their ability to extend towards their targets and transmit proper synaptic signals. It also highlights the need for further investigations to better understand the mechanistic link between FXN silencing and proprioceptive degeneration in Friedreich ataxia.