Targeting mitochondria with organelle-specific compounds: Strategies and applications

Mitochondria are the energy factories of the cell and also serve as a checkpoint regulating programmed cell death. Not surprisingly, dysfunctional mitochondria are implicated in a variety of diseases ranging from metabolic disorders to cancer. Treatment of these diseases through the delivery of targeted drugs, however, is impeded by the difficulty of penetrating the membranes that define this organelle. The properties of this barrier serve as a major obstacle to drug delivery and a lack of effective transporters has hindered the advancement of mitochondrial medicine. Recently, however, synthetic transporters that show promise for the mito-specific delivery of bioactive cargos have begun to emerge. This review summarizes the most exciting of these developments and discusses their applications.