Precision Mitochondria
Backed by £66m, this programme sits within the Programmable Physiology opportunity space and aims to create a foundational toolkit for engineering the mitochondrial genome in vivo.
Our goal
Mitochondria are central to complex life, and their dysfunction is a major contributor to many diseases and the ageing process. Yet our ability to investigate the precise nature of that link is limited, because the tools to manipulate mitochondrial DNA remain rudimentary, decades behind what is available for nuclear and prokaryotic DNA. This programme seeks to build a revolutionary toolkit to precisely study and edit mitochondrial DNA. This will bring the full power of modern genetic engineering to the mitochondrion for the first time, empowering scientists to rigorously and robustly investigate the link between mitochondrial health and disease. In the long term, it could lead to groundbreaking therapies that reprogramme mitochondria to fight disease. We’re funding a diverse community of experts spanning mitochondrial biology, evolutionary biology, engineering biology, and nanotechnology to tackle this challenge.
Explore the funded projects
We’re funding 19 teams of world-leading experts spanning a range of fields, from mitochondrial and engineering biology to nanotechnology. Together, they’ll pursue multiple approaches to build a revolutionary toolkit that brings the power of modern engineering to the mitochondrion for the first time – empowering scientists to rigorously investigate the link between mitochondrial health and disease.
Meet the programme team
Our Programme Directors are supported by a core team that provides a blend of operational coordination and highly specialised technical expertise.
Ryan Olf
Ryan is a Caltech and Berkeley-trained physicist with a varied and voracious technical appetite. His previous adventures include creating the world’s lowest-entropy quantum gas, designing nanotube-based GLP-1 implants, automating gene therapy manufacturing, and developing software for his family’s village shop.
Sarath Murugan
Sarath joined ARIA from a business operations and strategy role at a defence engineering scale-up, where his team developed a product that brought the capabilities of gen-AI to the disconnected-edge. He holds an LLB from Bristol, and has experience in project and product-facing roles. Sarath supports ARIA as an operating partner from Pace.
Maximilian Sichrovsky
As a biochemist, Maximilian's doctoral research at Cambridge focused on mitochondrial biology, using structural and functional studies to better understand membrane transport processes. Before joining ARIA, he was active in Nucleate – helping to bridge the gap between research and entrepreneurship in biotech – and worked with the UK Government Office for Science alongside his academic research.
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