The role of mitochondria-targeted therapeutics to improve oocyte quality in mice and humans

Behind every treatment that improves fertility rate is a story of discovery. Infertility is considered one of the major global health issues. With age, egg quality is dramatically impacted, leading to some functional changes that occur during the reproductive period in women. Particularly, the providers of energy in eggs, mitochondria, lose the ability to support normal biological functions. We hypothesized aging-related defects in mitochondrial function lead to declining fertility. During the experiments, we observed that mitochondria-targeted agents pave the way to mitigate the effect of aging. Therefore, mitochondrial therapies are a promising concept to tackle decreasing fertility in aged women.