Evaluation of Hyaluronan from Different Sources:  Streptococcus zooepidemicus, Rooster Comb, Bovine Vitreous, and Human Umbilical Cord

Abstract

Sodium hyaluronate (HA) is widely distributed in extracellular matrixes and can play a role in orchestrating cell function. Consequently, many investigators have looked at the effect of exogenous HA on cell behavior in vitro. HA can be isolated from several sources (e.g., bacterial, rooster comb, umbilical cord) and therefore can possess diverse impurities. This current study compares the measured impurities and the differences in biological activity between HA preparations from these sources. It was demonstrated that nucleic acid and protein content was highest in human umbilical cord and bovine vitreous HA and was low in bacterial and rooster comb HA. Macrophages exposed to human umbilical cord HA produced significantly higher amounts of TNF-alpha relative to control or bacterial-derived HA. These results indicate that the source of HA should be considered due to differences in the amounts and types of contaminants that could lead to widely different behaviors in vitro and in vivo.

Bovine vitreous gel can reactivate replicative senescence of human dermal fibroblast

“…Importantly, these findings show that BVG has the ability to regenerate the function of serum-starved HDFs. This regeneration occurs because BVG contains high levels of HA (Shiedlin et al 2004). Indeed, previous a study showed that HA could enhance fibroblast extracellular structural mechanical supports, change fibroblast cellular morphologies, re-expose of hidden TGF-β1 receptor and ameliorate the TGF-β1 signaling pathway in procollagen synthesis (Quan et al 2013).…”

“…Importantly, these macromolecules also exhibit little significant quantitative variation among different mammals (Theocharis et al 2008), although bovine vitreous gel contains higher hyaluronic acid levels than other sources, such as Streptococcus zooepidemicus or rooster comb (Shiedlin et al 2004). Additionally, bovine vitreous gel can be obtained from bovine eye-balls, which are found readily from slaughterhouse waste.…”

Hyaluronic Acid in the 3^rd Millennium

“…Hence, there is a strong interest in optimizing HA production processes to obtain products that fulfill high quality standards and are characterized by great yield and accessible costs. Both the source and the purification process concur to determine the characteristics of the produced HA in terms of purity, MW, yield and cost [124,125]. Therefore, producing high quality HA with high yield and less costly methods represents one of the biggest challenges in the field of hyaluronan applied research.…”

“…The first production process applied at an industrial scale consisted in HA extraction from animal sources, such as bovine vitreous and rooster combs [46,49,124]. Despite the extraction protocols were improved over the years, this methodology was always hampered by several technical limitations which led to the production of highly polydispersed HA (MW ≥ 10 6 Da) with low yield [1,46].…”

“…This was due to the polymer intrinsic polydispersity, its low concentration in the tissues, and its uncontrolled degradation caused by the endogenous HYAL and the harsh isolation conditions [46,49]. Additional disadvantages of animal-derived HA were represented by the risk of biological contamination -presence of proteins, nucleic acids and viruses-and by the high purification costs [46,49,124]. Therefore, alternative methodologies for the industrial production of HA have been developed.…”