Nanotransplantation

Mitochondrial transplantation will help in organ transplantation

Sergey Vasiliev, Naked Science

Mitochondria are often called "power stations" of eukaryotic cells. These organelles oxidize glucose with oxygen, producing ATP molecules — a chemical energy source that feeds all intracellular processes. The heat released at the same time also warms the body. The process is massive and continuous, one cell can contain hundreds of thousands of mitochondria. Stable intake of ATP is vital, and its violation is fraught with rapid death of individual cells, entire tissues and organs.

To get rid of such problems, mitochondrial transplantation is proposed — an experimental procedure that allows new healthy organelles to be introduced into cells for the treatment, or "rejuvenation" of organs, or for their preservation during transplantation. It is still in the early stages of development, and some approaches are being tested only on animal models.

The development of scientists from the Swiss Higher Technical School of Zurich (ETH Zurich) is ready to give a new impetus to such research. Julia Vorholt and her colleagues have created a tool that helps to carry out such "cell surgery" more accurately and reliably, ensuring high survival of transferred mitochondria. Scientists write about this in an article published in the journal PLOS Biology (Gäbelein et al., Mitochondria transplantation between living cells).

The new "nano-syringe" is able to carefully pierce the membrane of the donor cell, get to the desired area of the cytoplasm, pick it up along with the mass of mitochondria, and then release them into the recipient cell. Thanks to the use of the laser "ruler" of the atomic force microscope, the device accurately controls the position of the hollow needle and regulates the pressure by sucking incredibly small amounts of liquid — in the words of the authors, millionths of millionths of a milliliter.

All this makes the invasive procedure minimally dangerous for cells and organelles themselves. The survival rate of mitochondria after transplantation with a "nano-syringe" exceeds 80 percent. Once in a new cell, they quickly get to work and after 20 minutes begin to integrate into the membrane structures on which the mass production of ATP unfolds. They successfully reproduce inside the cell and are passed on to offspring (recall, mitochondria carry their own DNA, divide and are inherited independently of the main genome).

Voorholt and her co-authors believe that thanks to the new method, mitochondrial transplantation technology has reached sufficient technical maturity to soon turn into one of the standard medical procedures. It will allow to "rejuvenate" organs whose tissues suffer from mitochondrial dysfunction — a common problem of an aging organism — and expand the possibilities of transplantation.

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