Friday, May 9, 2025
5/9/2025
Mitochondrial Transplantation Conference - Project Summary: Mitochondrial transplantation (MT) is a new potential therapeutic with implications for the treatment of a wide variety of bioenergetic conditions, from cardiac arrest, to aging, cancer, obesity, and stroke. Despite rising interest in MT over the past five years, MT researchers have never had a conference focused on their work. Mitochondrial medicine is at a critical juncture in its development as a field: while researchers have published many promising results in animal models and even begun a human trial based on those results, it is not yet a large, stable, well-funded field. An NIH-funded, national conference will connect a network of academic and industry scientists still largely working in isolation from one another. Without a conference dedicated to MT, these researchers will remain siloed in their own labs and institutions, hampering the progress of this potentially paradigm-changing therapeutic. To that end, we are requesting funds to support the first-ever conference focusing on MT. Our speakers include the founder of mitochondrial medicine, Dr. Doug Wallace, and the first person to undertake a Phase 1 human trial of MT in the brain, Dr. Melanie Walker. We are also soliciting oral abstracts and posters from young investigators. The conference will focus on current MT research, such as transplantation modalities, mechanistic hypotheses, and the therapeutic value of mitochondrial transplantation. Patient advocates will also speak about the impact of mitochondrial disease on themselves and their families. We aim to use this initial conference to lay the groundwork for an annual, flagship international conference for MT. Collaborations stemming from the conference may accelerate the development of clinically relevant therapeutics for mitochondrial dysfunction.
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