Community Verified source

Cambridge will lead £50m centre searching for treatments for mitochondrial DNA diseases

A new £50m Medical Research Council centre led from Cambridge will bring researchers, clinicians and patients together to develop therapies for mitochondrial DNA diseases.

By The TEA Editorial Desk · 28 August 2026

Illustration of a mitochondrion and mitochondrial DNA Image: Darryl Leja, NHGRI / MitoCAMBOriginal source

Need something explained?Tap a highlighted word, phrase or concept, or select any part of the article and choose Explain this.

Cambridge will lead a new £50 million centre trying to build the scientific foundations for for mitochondrial DNA diseases.

The Medical Research Council Centre of Research Excellence in Mitochondrial Genome Therapeutics will be led by Professor Michal Minczuk and bring together specialists from multiple disciplines alongside patients and teams.

Mitochondrial diseases are genetic disorders affecting roughly one in 5,000 people. They can damage organs with high energy demands, including the brain, heart and muscles, and there is currently no cure for the mitochondrial DNA mutations.

The centre's task is ambitious but unusually focused: understand exactly how those mutations cause disease, then turn that knowledge into therapies. Fifty million pounds does not create a cure on day one, but it buys the scale, time and shared needed to move a difficult field beyond isolated experiments.