Preclinical work aimed at developing new therapies for mitochondrial diseases has recently given new hopes and opened unexpected perspectives for the patients affected by these pathologies. In contrast, only minor progresses have been achieved so far in the translation into the clinics. Many challenges are still ahead, including the need for a better characterization of the pharmacological effects of the different
approaches and the design of appropriate clinical trials with robust outcome measures for this extremely heterogeneous, rare, and complex group of disorders. In this review, we will discuss the most important achievements and the major challenges in this very dynamic research field.Our work is supported by MRC (grants: MC_UU_00015/5 and MC_EX_MR/P007031/1) and ERC (grant FP7-322424