One-to-one Benefit provided by Antioxidants to cultured skin Fibroblasts from Friedreich Ataxia patients

One-to-one Benefit provided by Antioxidants to cultured skin Fibroblasts from Friedreich Ataxia patients, Paule Bénit, Malgorzata Rak, Pierre Rustin, bioRxiv 2024.04.25.591088; doi: 10.1101/2024.04.25.591088 

Under conditions that force the cells to rely on mitochondrial activity, we observed significant yet variable FRDA cell proliferation. These conditions were thereafter used to screen the effectiveness of a set of antioxidant molecules targeting different steps of the pro-oxidant cascade previously documented in FRDA, i.e. Uridine, Pyruvate, and Pioglitazone, to prevent or slow down cell mortality. We observed a surprising variability of response to antioxidant molecules even under the similar, controlled conditions used to culture patient’s fibroblasts. We conclude that the specific response of each individual already discernable at cellular level may well play an important role in the frequent difficulties encounter to reach firm conclusions when testing the capacity of antioxidants to counteract the consequences of frataxin depletion, including in clinical trials.

One-to-one Benefit provided by Antioxidants to cultured skin Fibroblasts from Friedreich Ataxia patients