Moms’ mitochondria may refresh cells in sick kids | Science
A gift from their mothers might reenergize the cells of children who carry faulty mitochondria, the organelles that serve as cells’ power plants. A research team is testing a strategy that involves soaking patients’ blood cells in a broth of healthy mitochondria from their mothers and then reinfusing them. Early signs suggest the intervention is safe and may improve the children’s health and development, and the researchers are planning a follow-up clinical trial.
This approach “is different from what anyone else is doing,” says Mary Kay Koenig, a pediatric neurologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, who wasn’t connected to the study, published today in Science Translational Medicine. Although the result...