Abstract
Mitochondria carry out various essential functions including ATP production, regulating apoptosis, and they also have their own genome, mitochondrial DNA. In recent years, mitochondrial dysfunctions have been implicated as being involved in a number of diseases. Therefore, drug delivery systems（DDS） targeting mitochondria represent a promising tool in various fields including the life sciences, drug discovery and gene therapy. Many mitochondrial DDS developments have been reported during the past decade, however, only a limited number of approaches are available for mitochondrial therapy. Because these strategies face many problems including cell internalization, size limitations and the physicochemical properties of the cargos, modification of a functional device, and the denaturation of the cargoes. To overcome these problems, the DDS development using nanotechnology has been attracting attention, and nano-DDS development research is underway to deliver cargoes to mitochondria. In this review, we described the development of nano-DDS targeting mitochondria and our research on MITO-Porter, a liposomal nano-DDS targeting mitochondria.
