![]() “The ability to deliver a gas opens up whole new opportunities of how we think of therapeutics. They came up with the idea of incorporating the gas into a foam. To tackle that challenge, Otterbein teamed up with co-senior author Giovanni Traverso, MD, PhD, MBBCH, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, whose lab specializes in developing novel methods for delivering drugs to the gastrointestinal tract. “However, it’s been a challenge to use it in the clinic, for a number of reasons related to safe and reproducible administration, and health care workers’ concerns, which has led to people wanting to find other ways to administer it.” “We’ve known for years that carbon monoxide can impart beneficial effects in all sorts of disease pathologies, when given as an inhaled gas,” said co-senior author Leo Otterbein, PhD, a professor of surgery at BIDMC, whose lab focuses primarily on carbon monoxide and its potent therapeutic effects when used at low concentrations in models of shock, transplantation, and vascular surgery. The new technique, described today in a Science Translational Medicine paper, could also be used to deliver other therapeutic gases, the researchers say. In a study of mice, the researchers showed that these foams reduced inflammation of the colon and helped to reverse acute liver failure caused by acetaminophen overdose. Inspired by techniques used in culinary science known as molecular gastronomy, researchers incorporated carbon monoxide into stable foams that can be delivered to the digestive tract. However, at lower doses, the gas has been shown to reduce inflammation and can help stimulate tissue regeneration.Ī team led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, has now devised a novel way to deliver carbon monoxide to the body while bypassing its potentially hazardous effects. When inhaled at high concentrations, it binds to hemoglobin in the blood and prevents the body from obtaining enough oxygen, which can lead to serious health effects and even death. New Technique To Make Therapeutic Gases Available To Tissues Could Have Broad ApplicationsīOSTON – Carbon monoxide is best known as a potentially deadly gas.
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