BIDMC transplant scientist Leo Otterbein, PhD, awarded NIH EUREKA grant

4-year grant totaling $1.4 million will investigate medical applications for carbon monoxide

BOSTON – Leo Otterbein, PhD, a scientist in the Division of Transplantation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) whose novel research has revealed medical applications for carbon monoxide gas, has been awarded a $1.4 million, four-year EUREKA grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The award will enable Otterbein to continue to study the underlying biology behind this seemingly paradoxical idea and, if successful, could lead to new therapies for a range of medical applications from adjunct cancer treatments to fighting bacterial infections to helping kidney-transplant patients avoid organ rejection.

An acronym for Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration, EUREKA grants are part of an initiative unveiled last year by the NIH to fund innovative research and test new, unconventional ideas. "EUREKA awards reflect the NIH's continued commitment to funding transformative research, even if it carries more than the usual degree of scientific risk," noted NIH Director Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD. "The grants seek to elicit those 'eureka moments' when scientists make major theoretical or technical advances."

Although carbon monoxide (CO) has a reputation as a sinister, silent killer, it is also vital to our health and well-being. Every cell in the human body produces and uses CO gas molecules to respond to intracellular stresses, inflammation, control of blood pressure, memory and circadian rhythm. In fact, when a person gets sick, the body's CO levels protectively rise in response, the theory being that endogenous CO generation within the body is beneficial.

"Perception of CO has been a huge problem with this work," explains Otterbein, who is also an Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and a member of BIDMC's Transplant Institute. "It's one of the things we had working against us when we started this research, but it also helped us win this [EUREKA] funding precisely because our work is so unconventional."