Author Archives: Maureen Newman

A team of scientists led by Dr. David Pagliarini, PhD, recently identified three new proteins that relate to mitochondrial disease while delving into the incomplete protein map of mitochondria. The team at University of Wisconsin-Madison published two papers in the journal Molecular Cell describing these proteins. Pagliarini, a UW-Madison associate…

In the pipeline at Stealth BioTherapeutics is a new therapy, MTP-131, with the potential to treat individuals with mitochondrial disease and other diseases affected by mitochondrial dysfunction. The systemic version of MTP-131 (also known as Bendavia) is in clinical trials for skeletal muscle and cardio-renal diseases. The topical…

Mitochondrial myopathy is a collective term for diseases related to defective mitochondria in cells. In patients with mitochondrial myopathy, mitochondria are not able to undergo normal oxygen consumption and energy production due to mutations in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) or nuclear DNA that affect the mitochondrial machinery of cells. Diseases appear most…

A recent literature review revealed that mitochondria may play a role in the second most common neurodegenerative disorder: Parkinson’s disease (PD). The review was published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences and is entitled “Mitochondria: A Therapeutic Target for Parkinson’s Disease?“.

Muscle disorders (myofibrillar myopathies) can sometimes be caused by genetic mutations in genes related to proteins in muscle bands, but other times, myofibrillar myopathies are caused by mitochondrial dysfunction. According to a research team from the Departments of Neurology and Pathology at Technische Universität Dresden in Germany, different subtypes of…

NeuroVive Pharmaceutical AB (publ), the mitochondrial medicine company, is currently conducting a Phase III clinical study (“CIRCUS”) with its lead candidate CicloMulsion® in patients with ST-segment elevation acute myocardial infarction (STEMI). Topline results are expected in this quarter, which is sooner than expected, and will determine the success of meeting…

Researchers from the Weill Cornell Medical College Brain and Mind Research Institute in White Plains, New York are studying Huntington’s disease by exploring biochemical pathways in mouse models of the disease. The team, led by Nima N. Naseri in the laboratory of Gary E. Gibson, PhD, found that an abnormal…

Involuntary muscle twitches, generalized epilepsy, and cerebellar ataxia — these symptoms are typically indicative of a mitochondrial myopathy. Yet with the different types of mitochondrial myopathies, it may be difficult to determine the precise diagnosis for patients affected with these varied symptoms. A group from Universidade Federal do Paraná in Brazil…

Women with mitochondrial disease hold a high risk of passing their hereditary disease on to their children. This makes having a healthy child somewhat of a gamble, but a group from Salk Institute for Biological Studies is removing the risk with tiny “molecular scissors” and recently published a report in…

A currently-recruiting Phase 1 clinical trial will identify if stem cell transplants are a safe treatment option for the rare disease mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalopathy syndrome (MNGIE). The study aims to recruit 12 patients with MNGIE and treat them with allogeneic hematopoetic stem cells collected from the bone marrow or blood…