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Updated: Sep 10, 2025

Author Spotlight: Transmitochondrial Cybrid Generation Using Cancer Cell Lines
Published on: March 17, 2023
Cancer as a failed response to renegade mitochondria
1Department of Anesthesiology, State University of New York Downstate Health Sciences University, Brooklyn, NY, 11203, USA.
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In 1948, before the word 'mitochondrion' gained common parlance in the lexicon of cell biologists, Cyril Darlington published The Plasmagene Theory of the Origin of Cancer without referring to mitochondria per se. Reconsideration of Darlington's theory is warranted today because discoveries about the extraordinary capacities of mitochondria - the organelles that house Darlington's "plasmagenes" - have grown exponentially. If Darlington was right, if intracellular competition between mutant and wild-type mitochondria is the first cause of cancer, it may be the case that a general cure for cancer will include injection of: (A) nanoparticles carrying wild-type mitochondrial genes, and (B) copious amounts of wild-type mitochondria.
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