Tens of thousands die from CO poisoning worldwide each year, in addition to millions more nonfatal incidents. The odorless gas can wreak such havoc because it binds to hemoglobin with hundreds of times the efficiency of oxygen and because its slowly escalating symptoms of hypoxia\u2014from headache and nausea to dizziness to dyspnea and confusion\u2014can sneak up on unsuspecting victims until it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n
\n An illustration of multiple, twisting, cyan-colored ribbons connected by thin strands, surrounding an assemblage of tiny spheres representing various molecules.<\/p>\n
This image depicts the CO sponge RcoM-HBD-CCC as generated in AlphaFold, with Heme and Histidine 74 (residue providing the covalent bond between the protein and the heme) as balls and sticks. Carbon atoms are marked as green, nitrogen as blue, iron as orange, and oxygen as red.<\/p>\n
Credit:
\n Jesus Tejero<\/p>\n
But to date, the only treatment for CO poisoning has been oxygen itself, sometimes just room air, other times 100% oxygen or\u2014in extreme cases, such as with pregnant people\u2014hyperbaric chambers. But each of those routes requires valuable time to slowly and steadily flush CO from the body. In emergency medicine, which calls the critical period after a person\u2019s trauma the golden hour (or even the platinum ten minutes), such interventions can feel excruciatingly slow.<\/p>\n
By contrast, this novel protein therapy can flush half the CO from the body in less than a minute. RcoM-HBD-CCC originates from RcoM (short for regulator of CO metabolism), a sensor protein that can detect CO down to the nanomolar level. And by using stopped-flow electronic absorption spectroscopy, the researchers found that RcoM-HBD-CCC binds CO nearly 50 times as fast as hemoglobin binds CO, such that it works as soon as it hits the bloodstream.<\/p>\n
RcoM-HBD-CCC isn\u2019t the first candidate for a CO-poisoning antidote. One of the field\u2019s enduring challenges, however, has been to find a scavenger that doesn\u2019t also possess an affinity for nitric oxide, which serves as a critical regulator of blood pressure. It would be a superb irony to avert a case of CO poisoning only to manifest debilitating hypertension. Importantly, the researchers note that intravenous administration of RcoM-HBD-CCC in mice did not exhibit any hypertensive effects.<\/p>\n
Timothy Johnstone, who is a guest editor for the paper and whose lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been working to develop its own solution to the problem using small-molecule iron-porphyrin complexes, has high hopes for the therapy\u2019s future. \u201cThis is a problem so uniquely suited to a bioinorganic solution,\u201d Johnstone says. \u201cTechnical improvements like the one described here will only continue to bring the application closer to practical realization.\u201d<\/p>\n
On top of its promising future as an antidote, RcoM-HBD-CCC has properties that could also serve as the foundation for other novel means of oxygen delivery, treatments for blood loss and anemia, or even preservation of organs for transplantation. Developers now hope to scale up production and prepare for clinical trials.<\/p>\n
\n Chemical & Engineering News<\/p>\n
ISSN 0009-2347<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9
\n 2025 American Chemical Society<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Researchers have potentially unlocked a remarkable new therapy for a sickness that has been the bane of firefighters…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[13929,49,48,53133,53134,84,37055,7430],"class_list":["post-89989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-biochemistry","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-carbon-monoxide","tag-co","tag-health","tag-poison","tag-protein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}