ChemBE Seminar: Francis Palmer

Description

Francis Palmer, the associate dean for research in the College of Engineering at The Ohio State University, will give a talk titled "Engineering a Novel Dual-Functioning Protein Complex for Treatment of Hemolysis" for the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Palmer is also an Ohio Eminent Scholar in nanotechnology and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.

Refreshments to follow.

Abstract:

Upon intravascular hemolysis (i.e., red blood cell lysis), cell-free hemoglobin (Hb) is released into the systemic circulation, which may subsequently release its iron-containing ligand—heme. Both cell-free Hb and heme are highly reactive and toxic species that elicit vasoconstriction, systemic hypertension, and oxidative tissue injury. Under normal physiological conditions, the naturally occurring plasma proteins haptoglobin (Hp) and hemopexin (Hpx) scavenge and neutralize cell-free Hb and heme, respectively. Unfortunately, acute or chronic hemolytic conditions deplete these natural scavenger proteins, leading to harmful sequalae such as acute kidney injury and end-organ damage.

In this talk, I will give an overview of techniques my lab has developed to purify Hp and manufacture apohemoglobin (apoHb), an analogue of Hpx generated by removing heme from Hb. Our purification strategies rely on simple observations that enable facile production of these proteins using tangential flow filtration, a scalable size-based separation system. I will then demonstrate how we can combine these two proteins—apoHb and Hp—to generate a single protein complex (apoHb-Hp) that can dually scavenge cell-free Hb and heme to treat hemolytic conditions.