Engineering a highly selective, hemoprotein-based scavenger as a carbon monoxide poisoning antidote with no hypertensive effect.

ABSTRACT: Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning causes 50,000 to 100,000 emergency department visits and ~1,500 deaths in the United States annually. Current treatments are limited to supplemental and/or hyperbaric oxygen to accelerate CO elimination. Even with oxygen therapy, nearly half of CO poisoning survivors suffer long-term cardiac and neurocognitive deficits related to slow CO clearance, highlighting a need for point of care antidotal therapies. Given the natural interaction between CO and ferrous heme, we hypothesized that the hemoprotein RcoM, a transcriptional regulator of microbial CO metabolism, would make an ideal platform for CO-selective scavenging from endogenous hemoproteins. We engineered an RcoM truncate (RcoM-HBD-CCC) that exhibits high CO affinity (K_a,CO = 2.8 × 10

SUBMITTER: Dent MR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12358919 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature