James Bryson

• BSc (Hons) Biomedical Genetics
• Elucidation of the mechanism of action of mitochondrially acting novel pharmaceutical agents

Many mitochondrial diseases are debilitating metabolic diseases caused by low numbers of effective mitochondria.  An effective and feasible way to treat such conditions is by up-regulating mitochondrial replication. The initial research found a couple of compounds from bacterial extracts showed some promise for increasing mitochondrial biogenesis.  The latter stages focused on creating a suitable model for testing if mitochondrial biogenesis had been up-regulated by using media containing galactose substrate (only metabolised by oxidative phosphorylation).  The results showed that wild type cells could grow sufficiently in galactose media for use as a model, however data was not interpretable for patient lines.

Funding source: Newcastle University