Objective: To determine the dry mass of fibroblasts obtained from apparently healthy individuals and patients with brain disorders or cancer pathologies for future diagnosis prospect.

Background: The seeks of discovering new biomarker to improve the diagnostic and the prognostic is one of the actual main challenge. Skin fibroblasts are known to retain specific environmental and aging history of patient making them a suitable model, reflecting the disease status and progression. Previous study analyzed alterations in growth, morphology and mitochondrial function in Parkinson’s disease skin fibroblast1. Here we decided to go further by assessing dry mass measurements of fibroblasts from several pathologies by using high sensitivity microscope coupled with software algorithm.

Method: Fibroblasts obtained from biopsy of patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease (genetic or sporadic cases), Huntington’s disease, epilepsy, Rett syndrome, cystic fibrosis or familial adenomatous polyposis were cultured. A label-free technique (quantitative phase microscopy using Quadriwave Lateral Shearing Interferometry) was used to allow a high-sensitivity observation of living fibroblasts and to determine their dry mass2.

Results: We have detected changes in morphology and in dry mass according to disease-related fibroblasts. Strikingly, we observed that Parkinson’s disease fibroblasts mass was statistically very different from control fibroblasts mass.

Conclusion: These data suggested that skin fibroblasts may represent an easily and accessible source and the changes in dry mass can reflect molecular changes and pathological status.

References: 1 Teves, J. M. Y. et al. Parkinson’s Disease Skin Fibroblasts Display Signature Alterations in Growth, Redox Homeostasis, Mitochondrial Function, and Autophagy. Front. Neurosci. 11, 737, doi:10.3389/fnins.2017.00737 (2017). 2 Aknoun, S. et al. Living cell dry mass measurement using quantitative phase imaging with quadriwave lateral shearing interferometry: an accuracy and sensitivity discussion. J. Biomed. Opt. 20, 126009, doi:10.1117/1.JBO.20.12.126009 (2015).

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/weighting-fibroblasts-for-future-diagnostic-prospect/