Specialty firm Edison Pharmaceuticals of Mountain View, California, has entered a strategic alliance worth up to $4.3 billon with Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma (DSP) of Osaka, Japan, to develop drugs for inherited respiratory chain diseases of the mitochondria. Under terms of the deal, the companies will jointly expand Edison's pipeline, bringing ten new compounds targeting redox pathways into clinical development over the next five years. Also in pursuit of mitochondria-related diseases is biotech firm Mitokyne of Boston, which in October 2013 struck a five-year agreement with Astellas Pharma of Tokyo, potentially worth $730 million, to discover and develop drugs that modulate mitochondrial function. After decades of disinterest from investors, the deals confirm that mitochondrial research is gaining more traction. Douglas Wallace, director of the Center for Mitochondrial and Epigenomic Medicine in Philadelphia, points to a wider acceptance that systemic, cellular-energy metabolism defects caused by mitochondrial mutations can result in organ-specific symptoms and multisystem disorders, such as diabetes and Alzheimer's disease. Wallace, who showed that mitochondrial DNA is inherited exclusively from the mother, says: “I'm hoping we can [persuade other pharmaceutical companies] that mitochondrial bioenergetics is a good target.” Hopes of tackling mitochondrial disease were raised on both sides of the Atlantic in February, when the US Food and Drug Administration and the UK government discussed mitochondrial replacement. This in vitro fertilization technique involves placing nuclear DNA from a woman with defective mitochondria into a donated egg that has had its nuclear DNA removed and contains healthy mitochondria. In the UK, where there is broad support for such a therapy, the government's Department of Health announced on February 27 that it was opening a three-month public comment period on draft legislation on the technique. At the US Food and Drug Administration, advisory panels discussed what controls might be used in clinical trials, but no decisions were made.