July 2025
Rejigit noticed that MitoQ Ltd was represented on NZ Prime Minister Chris Luxon’s recent trade delegation to China 18-20 June. MitoQ was an unfamiliar New Zealand company name and a little digging revealed what looks like another example of Kiwi ingenuity.
In the late 1990s Professor Mike Murphy and Professor Robin Smith began an extensive research program at Otago University in Dunedin, New Zealand relating to why many antioxidants weren’t readily absorbed by different parts of the body. They succeeded in creating a unique and patented antioxidant molecule - Mitoquinol Mesylate (MitoQ).
MitoQ Ltd is a subsidiary of U.S. registered Antipodean Pharmaceuticals Inc which is majority owned by New Zealander Gary Lane. He was awarded an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the last King’s Birthday honours recognising his outstanding contribution to conservation and philanthropy. One of his projects is the Wairakei Golf Course + Bird Sanctuary complex at Taupō where he funded a five kilometer x two meter+ high predator exclusion fence. The sanctuary includes a crèche for Kiwi chicks and twenty five thousand native trees have been planted at the property. Hooray!
MitoQ products had their origins in Dunedin and MitoQ Ltd is now based in Auckland with distribution centres in the United States, China and Europe.
The brief science around Mitoquinol Mesylate as described by MitoQ: When you breathe and eat, you nourish your body. You also create free radicals (bursts of oxygen molecules which may lead to oxidative stress). With advancing age and especially when life is intense, natural resistance to free radicals may need some additional support. Mitoquinol Mesylate was developed to be highly absorbable in order to support the body’s natural response to free radicals.
Antioxidents help prevent cell damage, which in humans can lead to numerous illnesses and diseases including Strokes, Cancer, Parkinson's Disease, inflammation of the Liver and Hepatitis C etc.
MitoQ is also intended as a treatment of degenerative diseases resulting from Mitochondrial dysfunction and It helps to prevent oxidative damage to mitochondria and inhibits apoptosis (cell death).
