College of Medical, Veterinary & Life Sciences

Mitotargin

Developing novel diagnostics and therapeutics targeting the mitochondria.

Professor Kostas Tokatlidis and his research group from the School of Molecular Biosciences at the University of Glasgow, are developing Mitotargin,  an innovative therapeutic or diagnostic agent targeting the mitochondria. This work has been supported by the TRI through Wellcome Trust, MRC and BBSRC funding.

The team behind Mitotargin have shown that targeting the mitochondria in a way that can modulate function and cell metabolism offers a promising therapeutic approach with potential to address unmet clinical needs including the treatment of therapy-resistant cancer, neurodegenerative and mitochondrial diseases.

Work to date has demonstrated that a variety of therapeutic and diagnostic agents including small molecules can be precisely delivered to intracellular mitochondria via Mitotargin. Furthermore, this approach has been shown to work even in compromised, membrane-damaged mitochondria (a hallmark of several human diseases). This is a significant improvement compared to existing mitochondria delivery strategies that are dependent on the intact nature of the inner mitochondrial membrane, and have so far been largely limited to small molecule delivery. 

Finally, the team have shown that this unique dual property of cell penetration across the plasma membrane and specific targeting to the mitochondria can operate in multiple cell types to deliver agents that target the mitochondria and modulate function and cell metabolism.

As a platform technology, Mitotargin offers a promising therapeutic approach with potential to address unmet clinical needs including the treatment of therapy-resistant cancer, mitochondrial dysfunction in diseases such as neurodegeneration and genetic mitochondrial diseases.

A short description of the project, its background and future outlook is provided in the information video below.