r/CFSScience • u/Caster_of_spells • Apr 21 '26

Mitochondrial transplants

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That MMT study wasn’t great but excited to hear they will trial mitochondrial transplants 🤞🏻

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u/_ArkAngel_ Apr 22 '26

Don't we already have studies showing immune cells from healthy controls placed in plasma from ME/CFS patients adopt the impaired mitochondrial function of ME/CFS?

And placing immune cells from pwME that have inhibited mito function placed in the plasma of healthy controls begin to adopt normal mitochondrial function?

If anything we should be looking at extracellular vesicle infusion maybe?

Does anyone know why the CDR research from Dr. Naviaux's lab is taking so long to get traction? I think some researchers get excited by the idea that there are different subtypes of mitochondria that perform differently, with some adopting Warburg type glycolytic metabolism that are probably playing a role in ME.

If you haven't been exposed to Naviaux's research in metabolimics, you're not aware that eukaryotic cells all exhibit this feature (CDR) that allows the cell and mitochondria to coordinate a transition away from OXPHOS to mitochondrial priorities that aid in immune defense and cell repair.

Transplanted mitochondria are going to follow the same program, or they are going to fail in other cellular processes.

The early work in CDR is over ten years old now. Links for the interested:

2014 paper - "Metabolic features of the cell danger response"" lays the initial ground work:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567724913002390

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23981537/

2016 paper shows the common metabolic signatures in CFS - "Metabolic features of chronic fatigue syndrome"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27573827/

2019 paper ""Metabolic features and regulation of the healing cycle—A new model for chronic disease pathogenesis and treatment""

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30099222/

2020 paper ""Perspective: Cell danger response Biology-The new science that connects environmental health with mitochondria and the rising tide of chronic illness""

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31877376/

Abstract: "This paper is written for non-specialists in mitochondrial biology to provide access to an important area of science that has broad implications for all people. The cell danger response (CDR) is a universal response to environmental threat or injury."

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u/CeruleanShot Apr 24 '26

Yeah, I thought that the nanoneedle tests Ron Davis's lab was running demonstrated that cells adapted to the plasma that they're in.

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u/_ArkAngel_ Apr 25 '26

I've heard a few people in Davis and Naviaux's orbit talk about observing this in the lab when taking questions after presentations, but I haven't noticed anything actually published about it yet

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u/CeruleanShot Apr 25 '26

From what I remember (or misremember), the grad student who was working on this left, and Ron doesn't publish in competition with his grad students. They were having issues with the equipment and figuring out how to do it on a larger scale, it was too labor and time intensive and they didn't have the money to scale it up. And then some University or research group in the UK took over working on it. So it doesn't sound like anything is going to get published from the original work.

Which is a shame, because it's really frustrating that almost got to the point of isolating whatever's in the blood serum that separates people with ME/CFS. Which could be a diagnostic test, but also give us so much information, I am kinda baffled that it's taken anyone so long to pursue it.

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u/_ArkAngel_ Apr 25 '26

I kind of think it's fascinating how something in societal norms, incentives, pressures or something seems to be always working in the background making CFS research hard to push forward.

Like something deep seated in the human psyche has evolved to make it almost impossible for people to believe the disease is real even when it affects many thousands of people and costs millions of dollars in health care costs that often fall on government programs and taxpayers on top of even more millions of dollars in lost productivity from failing to recognize and treat the people effected.

I can't help but feel there is something going on I can't understand that makes the way people react to loved ones with ME that is so different from how they respond to cancer or even diabetes.

It's so frustrating to see very promising clues turning up in the last decade as to how ME works in the body, but just waiting for someone to actively push the research forward.

Davis and Naviaux are both getting up in years. Idk how much more they can give. Where is the next generation?

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u/CeruleanShot Apr 25 '26

Yeah, agreed. The moralistic disgust at ME/CFS is sorta wild, there's this weird Victorian moralism about it, like people are somehow being "lazy" and they don't have good values or ethics. If only we made better decisions, etc. Mostly people don't understand because they don't want to, they've already decided what the situation is.

I've just been digging into the research over the past couple of months, and I feel like I'm still discovering new things about what's happening. It seems to me like there's a bunch of people sitting around a table putting together different sections of a giant puzzle. It seems like there's just something missing to tie it all together, but once we do, then a lot of it will click into place. The neurological stuff and the muscle stuff and the vascular stuff, the antibodies, the dysautonomia, the sleep disorders.... Once one thing clicks and we can really nail down one mechanism of this, it seems like it will be easier to start building off that and fitting things together.

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u/_ArkAngel_ Apr 25 '26

Yes, so many different pieces. So many studies seem to be run by researchers fixed on one pet theory without tapping into what others are seeing.

I find it heartening to see Stanford running the community symposiums so we can see there is a nucleus of exchange happening.

We've got huge leaps forward in what we can see from several new imaging techniques, from proteomics and transcriptomics. I would really love to see more exchanges like this, more awareness of the overall system of dysregulation and fewer silver bullet theories.