Impact
Martin Brand is a biochemist who studies mitochondrial energy transformation, energetic inefficiency and free-radical production, and their roles in physiology and the diseases of aging. Trained at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology and the University of Bristol, with postdoctoral work under A.L. Lehninger at Johns Hopkins, he was on the biochemistry faculty at the University of Cambridge and a group leader at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge before moving his laboratory to the Buck Institute in 2008, where he is now professor emeritus. His laboratory helped define site-specific suppressors of mitochondrial reactive oxygen species production, S1QELs (acting at site IQ in complex I) and S3QELs (site IIIQo in complex III), which block superoxide formation at source without impairing oxidative phosphorylation. In a 2025 review he summarises reported benefits of these suppressors in preclinical models of diabetes, cardiac aging, inflammation, ischemia-reperfusion and intestinal barrier dysfunction, and lifespan extension in model organisms. He received the Keilin Medal of the Biochemical Society, an Ellison Medical Foundation senior scholarship, and election as a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and continues to publish with a Buck affiliation in 2026.
Metrics
- h-index 120 · google scholar as of 2026-09-23 source ↗
Research output
434 works · 47,297 citations · h-index 106 OpenAlex ↗
Selected publications
- Assessing mitochondrial dysfunction in cells ↗ 2011 · 2,461 citations
- Topology of Superoxide Production from Different Sites in the Mitochondrial Electron Transport Chain ↗ 2002 · 1,547 citations
- Superoxide activates mitochondrial uncoupling proteins ↗ 2002 · 1,387 citations
- The sites and topology of mitochondrial superoxide production ↗ 2010 · 1,219 citations
- Mitochondrial generation of superoxide and hydrogen peroxide as the source of mitochondrial redox signaling ↗ 2016 · 1,076 citations
Research funding
3 NIH awards · USD 2M total NIH RePORTER ↗
- Leica TCS SP5 MP confocal and two-photon microscope NIH Office of the Director · 2012 · USD 599K
- Mitochondrial sites of reactive oxygen species generation in cells. National Institute on Aging · 2009 · USD 485K
- Mitochondrial sites of reactive oxygen species generation in cells. National Institute on Aging · 2010 · USD 485K