What colorless gas has historically been used to develop therapeutic drugs?
Carbon monoxide-releasing molecules Carbon monoxide-releasing molecules (CO-RMs) are chemical compounds that release controlled amounts of carbon monoxide (CO) to cells and tissues and are being developed as potential therapeutic agents. Although long recognized as a poison, CO also exhibits beneficial effects in small doses. These effects include anti-inflammatory activity, vasodilatation, and cardioprotection. CO is produced in mammals during the degradation of heme by heme oxygenase-1, a redox-sensitive enzyme induced by oxidative stress. It is this enzymatic reaction that inspired the development of synthetic CO-RMs. Therapeutic drugs have historically been developed based on the similar activity of small molecules in biological signaling, examples exist in the case of both HS and NO-releasing drugs.
History of chromatography The history of chromatography spans from the mid-19th century to the 21st. Chromatography, literally "color writing", was used—and named— in the first decade of the 20th century, primarily for the separation of plant pigments such as chlorophyll (which is green) and carotenoids (which are orange and yellow). New forms of chromatography developed in the 1930s and 1940s made the technique useful for a wide range of separation processes and chemical analysis tasks, especially in biochemistry.