![\"Illustration](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/d41586-026-00869-2_52186840.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Mitochondria (artist\u2019s impression) wrapped in red-blood-cell membranes can sneak into cells without being tagged for destruction.Credit: Alfred Pasieka\/SPL<\/p>\n
A well-fitted \u2018disguise\u2019 allows transplanted mitochondria to slip into cells whose own mitochondria are defective<\/a>, scientists reported on 18 March in Cell1<\/a>. Administration of these cloaked mitochondria prolonged the life of mice with a deadly disease caused by abnormal mitochondria.<\/p>\n The scientists found that a mitochondrion wrapped in the membrane of a red blood cell can enter a cell without triggering protective mechanisms that would typically destroy the organelle. The technique \u201chugely\u201d increased the efficiency of the treatment compared with previous methods, says Mike Devine, a neurobiologist at the Francis Crick Institute in London, who was not involved in the study. The difference is like \u201cnight and day\u201d, he says.<\/p>\n But scientists also expressed scepticism about some aspects of the study. The work is a \u201cremarkable advance\u201d, but the conclusion that the method prevents Parkinson\u2019s disease in a mouse model is \u201coverstated\u201d, says Ken Nakamura, a neuroscientist at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, California.<\/p>\n Targeted for destruction<\/p>\n Mitochondria are cellular substructures that produce fuel to power cellular activity.<\/a> They have their own genomes, and mutations in their DNA cause diseases<\/a> such as Leigh syndrome, a rare and often fatal disorder that usually strikes during early childhood.<\/p>\n Cancer cells get power boost by stealing mitochondria from nerves<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Scientists have long sought ways to transplant normal mitochondria into cells. But when mitochondria are exposed to tissue or blood, they lose the electrical gradient across their outer membrane. Mitochondria that lack such a gradient are recognized by a cell\u2019s internal machinery as damaged and are quickly destroyed<\/a>2<\/a>.<\/p>\n The vast majority of previous studies involved injecting \u201cnaked\u201d mitochondria directly into the bloodstream or tissue sites, says Noa Sher, chief scientific officer at Minovia Therapeutics in Haifa, Israel. But the approach isn\u2019t very efficient, so researchers often have to use \u201cridiculous\u201d doses of mitochondria that would be infeasible when scaled to a human-sized organism. \u201cIt is immediately obvious that you should protect the mitochondria if they\u2019re going to be outside of the cell,\u201d Sher says. \u201cWhat to put them in is more complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n Shrink-wrapped <\/p>\n The authors of the Cell study settled on using the membranes of red blood cells because the cells lack organelles with their own membranes. Creating the mitochondrial \u2018capsules\u2019 was then as simple as mixing ruptured red blood cells and mitochondria isolated using a commercially available kit. The scientists then injected these \u2018capsules\u2019 into mice.<\/p>\n The \u201cshell\u201d preserves the mitochondrion\u2019s electrical gradient, says co-author Qi Long, a biologist at Guangzhou Medical University in China. That allowed the organelles to slip into recipient cells undetected.<\/p>\n A \u2018capsule\u2019 of mitochondria (central dark circle) is enclosed by a red blood cell\u2019s membrane (outer dark oval).Credit: S. Du et al.\/Cell<\/p>\n Using previous methods, less than 5% of cells growing in laboratory dishes absorbed the mitochondria, says co-author Xingguo Liu, a biologist at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health in China. \u201cOur efficiency is super high,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s around 80%.\u201d<\/p>\n In a mouse model of Leigh syndrome, capsules of mitochondria increased survival of the mice by about two weeks. That\u2019s about 20% longer than mice treated with free-floating mitochondria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mitochondria (artist\u2019s impression) wrapped in red-blood-cell membranes can sneak into cells without being tagged for destruction.Credit: Alfred Pasieka\/SPL…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[30589,13056,1159,10545,3625,1160,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-535366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-cell-biology","9":"tag-gene-therapy","10":"tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","11":"tag-medical-research","12":"tag-metabolism","13":"tag-multidisciplinary","14":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/d41586-026-00869-2_51144384.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Black](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/d41586-026-00869-2_52191120.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n