When a battery dies, you replace it — how jumpstarting cells with fresh mitochondria could revolutionize medicine
But at its core is a straightforward idea: When a battery dies, you replace it.
Key points
- "It is hypothesized that mitochondria transfer has likely been retained throughout evolution of eukaryotic life," the huge domain of life that includes all plants, fungi, protists and animals, Brestoff told Live Science.
- Baby heart infusions are just one example of the promise of "mitochondrial transplantation." Following McCully's lead, other scientists have started investigating whether infusions of mitochondria could revitalize donated organs destined for transplantation, help stroke patients recover, and treat kids with devastating diseases.
- Following some back-of-the-envelope math, that means the total potential energy in each person "is the equivalent of a lightning bolt," Douglas Wallace, director of the Center for Mitochondrial and Epigenomic Medicine at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, told attendees last year at a symposium on mitochondrial medicine.
Relic of our evolutionary past The human body contains tens of trillions of cells, most of which contain hundreds to thousands of mitochondria.
Doctors and scientists at Boston Children's Hospital have been working to improve those odds using a creative idea: replacing the fuel source in damaged heart cells to help them bounce back from injury.
Additional details
- The idea of transferring these fuel factories from one cell to another as a medical treatment emerged less than two decades ago — but cells have been doing such swaps on their own for eons.
- Mitochondria are the powerhouses of nearly all complex cells on Earth, and there are a few theories as to….
- Jon Brestoff, an associate professor of pathology and immunology and director of the Immunometabolism Initiative at the Washington University School of Medicine in St.
- Sitaram Emani of Boston Children's Hospital have developed a technique to transplant mitochondria into the hearts of children recovering from surgery.
- That fuel source is mitochondria, the "batteries" found in most cells in the body.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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