Yuma Yamada
Hokkaido University, Japan.
Title: MITO-Porter, Mitochondrial drug delivery system toward innovative Therapy
Biography
Biography: Yuma Yamada
Abstract
A variety of human diseases, including neurodegenerative disorders, diabetes, cancer and inherited mitochondrial disease, are associated with mitochondrial dysfunction. Therefore, this organelle is a promising therapeutic drug target, and mitochondrial therapy would be expected to be useful and productive for the treatment of various diseases. To achieve such an innovative therapy, it will be necessary to deliver therapeutic agents into mitochondria in living cells. However, only a limited number of approaches are available for accomplishing this. We recently proposed a new concept of mitochondrial delivery, a MITO-Porter, a liposome-based carrier that introduces macromolecular cargos into mitochondria via membrane fusion (Y. Yamada et al, Biochim. Biophys. Acta 1778: 423-432 (2008)). Using the green fluorescence protein as a model macromolecule and confocal laser scanning microscopy as the detection methodology, we were able to confirm that the MITO-Porter is, in fact, capable of delivering a macromolecule to mitochondria. In this presentation, we will talk about our current efforts regarding validation of mitochondrial therapeutic strategy using the MITO-Porter system.