An Antioxidant Enzyme Therapeutic for Sepsis

Feifei Li; Ran Yan; Jun Wu; Zeren Han; Meng Qin; Chaoyong Liu; Yunfeng Lu

doi:10.3389/fbioe.2021.800684

An Antioxidant Enzyme Therapeutic for Sepsis

Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2021 Nov 23:9:800684. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2021.800684. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Feifei Li^{1

2}, Ran Yan³, Jun Wu², Zeren Han¹, Meng Qin^{1

2}, Chaoyong Liu^{1

2}, Yunfeng Lu³

Affiliations

¹ Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Soft Matter Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, China.
² College of Life Science and Technology, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, China.
³ Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The University of California, Los Angeles, CA, United States.

Abstract

Sepsis is a systemic inflammatory response syndrome caused by infections that may lead to organ dysfunction with high mortality. With the rapid increase in the aging population and antimicrobial resistance, developing therapeutics for the treatment of sepsis has been an unmet medical need. Excessive production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) during inflammation is associated with the occurrence of sepsis. We report herein a treatment for sepsis based on PEGylated catalase, which can effectively break down hydrogen peroxide, a key component of ROS that is chemically stable and able to diffuse around the tissues and form downstream ROS. PEGylated catalase can effectively regulate the cytokine production by activated leukocytes, suppress the elevated level of AST, ALT, TNF-α, and IL-6 in mice with induced sepsis, and significantly improve the survival rate.

Keywords: catalase; cytokines; enzyme therepeutic; reactive oxygen species; sepsis.