Nature Communications (Dec 2020)

Neutralizing the pathological effects of extracellular histones with small polyanions

  • Connor H. O’ Meara,
  • Lucy A. Coupland,
  • Farzaneh Kordbacheh,
  • Benjamin J. C. Quah,
  • Chih-Wei Chang,
  • David A. Simon Davis,
  • Anna Bezos,
  • Anna M. Browne,
  • Craig Freeman,
  • Dillon J. Hammill,
  • Pradeep Chopra,
  • Gergely Pipa,
  • Paul D. Madge,
  • Esther Gallant,
  • Courtney Segovis,
  • Angela F. Dulhunty,
  • Leonard F. Arnolda,
  • Imogen Mitchell,
  • Levon M. Khachigian,
  • Ross W. Stephens,
  • Mark von Itzstein,
  • Christopher R. Parish

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20231-y
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 17

Abstract

Read online

Histones, proteins that bind DNA, are toxic for pathogens outside cells but can also cause multi-organ damage as seen in sepsis. Here the authors develop small negatively charged molecules that can be used as histone antidotes, and show that they improve the phenotype in mouse models with histone-related pathologies.