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JLemay | 7 months ago

This is such an incredible breakthrough and a huge win for science and families alike, however its sad that despite decades of work there is still no cure for mitochondrial disease. But the chance to preventing it being passed on is still such a major improvement. Also it’s sad that only the uk is capable of doing this atm bc it was the first country in the world to introduce laws to allow their creation after a vote in Parliament in 2015, while other countries were debating that it would open the doors to genetically-modified "designer" babies

discuss

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FerretFred|7 months ago

It is an incredible breakthrough and if it prevents disease then all well and good, but are our Administrative Systems set up to handle such an arrangement?

maxerickson|7 months ago

Sure. The mitochondrial donor can be treated as a source of tissue and you are all done.

im3w1l|7 months ago

Cells can exchange mitochondria so in theory it might be possible to flood the body with healthy mitochondria and get them to slowly take over.

yorwba|7 months ago

I would expect that to activate the immune system. "the unique components of mitochondria, when exposed, reveal their prokaryotic history and are recognized as foreign by innate immune receptors triggering an inflammatory response." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6218307/

Maybe if you suppress the immune system, introduce working mitochondria, and then stop taking the immunosuppressants, any mitochondria that are still outside cells get cleaned up and the ones that got absorbed are shielded and can do their job.

dr_dshiv|7 months ago

Mitochondrial health is definitely going to be a big theme in the coming years.

type0|7 months ago

> it might be possible to flood the body with healthy mitochondria and get them to slowly take over

it's not possible, these are organelles that are too big to be taken up by your cells, unless you can magically teleport them somehow to each cell