MitoWorld

In “Beyond the Disease” MitoWorld partners with the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation (UMDF) to highlight advances in mitochondrial science and the people responsible for them. www.MitoWorld.org is devoted to better public and medical understanding of underlying mitochondrial science in an effort to raise awareness of the field in order to attract greater funding for the pursuit of mitochondrial disease and dysfunction.

Cancer cells surviving immune attack via disabled mitochondria immune

Modeling Human Mitochondrial Diseases, MitoWorld commentator Howy Jacobs describes a new paper by Hideki Ikeda of the Chiba Cancer Center Research Institute in Japan. The work breaks new ground by showing that the interaction of immune cells with cancer cells can facilitate a bidirectional mitochondrial exchange that simultaneously favours cancer cell viability and immune evasion.

In A New Twist on Treating Diseases: Pretzel Therapeutics, Inc., MitoWorld editor Gary Howard describes the interesting work by a new company focused on mitochondrial diseases. Pretzel Therapeutics hopes to restore cellular energetics to treat neurodegenerative and rare diseases associated with low mtDNA levels or to modify bioenergetics to treat obesity. One drug in clinical trials is a small-molecule activator that restored function to the most common mutants of the mtDNA polymerase, PolG.

In these Mito-Shorts, MitoWorld editor Gary Howard summarizes several recent academic publications about significant advances in understanding mitochondria in aging, related to synapses, balancing transcription and replication, producing energy and recycling damaged mitochondria.

In Treating Mitochondria to Slow Aging?, Mito-World editor Gary Howard summarizes a paper from the laboratory of Dr. Jennifer Trowbridge at The Jackson Laboratory published in Nature Communications. The paper describes how a genetic mutation that alters the function of mitochondria may provide a target for slowing aging.

Mitochondrial disease discovery process, SolveRD, University of Cambridge

In Identifying Mitochondrial Mutations, MitoWorld editor Gary Howard describes a new paper by Thiloka Ratnaike and Rita Horváth at the University of Cambridge. The work, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, reports a new computational workflow that can identify mutations associated with rare mitochondrial diseases.

Beyond The Disease, May 3, 2025