Forget what Mom and Dad said about carbon monoxide being bad. OK, don’t forget that, but to give what scientists call CO a fair shake, you have to consider that there’s a good side to CO.

That’s what Alfama Inc. is focused on.

The life sciences company based in Cambridge and Portugal sees carbon monoxide as a therapy for a significant number of medical conditions, including liver failure, rheumatoid arthritis, heart attack and gastric ulcers. The trick is in delivering CO to the disease site without causing the problems that most people associate with the gas. So, Alfama is working on carbon monoxide releasing molecules (CO-RMs) that would deliver CO to diseased tissue without harming healthy tissue.

SOURCE