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Miguel Bronchud: What might be the best “ideal funding” for scientific research?

Miguel Bronchud/LinkedIn

Jan 27, 2025, 17:25

Miguel Bronchud: What might be the best “ideal funding” for scientific research?

Miguel Bronchud, Co-Founder and Advisory Board at Regenerative Medicine Solutions, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“What might be the best ‘ideal funding’ for scientific research? If one is rich enough, and almost nobody is, probably ‘self funding’?

Meaning…of course, ‘extremely rich’.

Perhaps the best true and historical example I can think of in terms of successful ‘self funding’ is the English scientist Peter Mitchell-

Were it not for his personal and family fortune (based in part on the English equivalent to owning a Burger King’s or McDonald’s chain several decades ago), we might not yet have understood how mitochondria really work in producing energy?

And what is more impressive is that Mitchell didn’t do it ‘for money’ or ‘power’ (unlike others?) – but for better knowledge and understanding Nature. For mankind’s benefit.

ATP has been known to be the basic energy ‘coin’ of biological processes for about one century. But how is it most efficiently produced?

ATP synthesis is associated with respiratory and photosynthetic processes catalyzed through complex redox enzymes embedded in lipid membranes. In other words, most of our biological energy is produced by ‘a clever combination of a lipid membrane bound electron/transport chain’ and a ‘perpendicular’ proton pump gradient.

Today, this electrochemical energy chain is accepted knowledge. However, when Peter Mitchell first postulated a mechanism for this in 1961, through his ‘chemiosmotic theory’, it was immediately met with hostility.

Professor Peter Rich of University College London recounted the history of Mitchell’s chemiosmotic theory through an engaging lecture at New York University London on 9 March 2016 – demonstrating how a rejected hypothesis became an accepted theory.

Mitchell P, Moyle J. Chemiosmotic hypothesis of oxidative phosphorylation. Nature. 1967 Jan 14;213(5072):137-9. doi: 10.1038/213137a0. PMID: 4291593.

No doubt , different XXth century great biochemistry scientists had influenced Mitchell’s ideas.”

miguel bronchud