At the turn of 1960-1970s, in 1969 V.Skulachev and his Moscow State University (MSU) colleagues, in collaboration with Prof. Yefim Liberman’s team (USSR Academy of science) were verifying the chemiosmotic hypothesis proposed by Dr. Peter Mitchell (Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry, 1978) who postulated the existence of electric potential difference across the mitochondrial membrane. The results of their work (published in Nature, 1969, 222, 1076-8) suggested that some compounds - lipophilic cations (phosphonium ions for instance) – can be targeted to mitochondria due to the electric field on the mitochondrial membrane as the mitochondrion has a negative charge inside. In 2004, a new substance was synthesized by the group of professor Vladimir P. Skulachev in the Moscow State University. Our project team later gave the substance its “production” name “SkQ1".
Two commercial entities Mitotech Russia and Mitotech EU were established around 2010 with an aim to develop SkQ1 into a drug targeting several age-related indications. Read more...