Heparan sulfate (HS) is a highly sulfated polysaccharide that is widely expressed in mammalian cell surface and extracellular matrix. HS is important in many biological processes such as regulating cell growth, blood coagulation, inflammation, viral and bacterial infection, signal transduction, lipid metabolism, and cell differentiation. Heparin produced by mast cells can be considered as a special form of heparan sulfate. It is commonly used as an anticoagulant therapeutic. After the 2007 heparin contamination incident, concerns have been raised about the safety of heparin extracted from animals. This further supports the need for cost effective synthetic methods for heparin. Most chemoenzymatic methods for synthetic heparin rely on commercially expensive sugar nucleotides. In this work, a complementary one-pot multienzyme (OPME) system has been developed for heparosan synthesis.  UDP-sugars are generated in situ and used by glycosyltransferases for elongating heparosan. This strategy can be applied to other glycosaminoglycans (GAGs).

Complementary one-pot multi-enzyme systems for heparosan oligosaccharide synthesis

247th National Meeting (2014)

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