Congrats to Pushpa and her collaborators on the new paper in the journal Carbohydrate Polymers. This new report describes Pushpa’s work to achieve the production of high-molecular-weight (HMW) hyaluronic acid, as part of her PhyCan (physics of cancer) project. Our interest in this polysaccharide stems from its important role in the extracellular matrix (ECM) of tissues, and in particular certain types of cancer tissues. In such tumors the amount of HA is upregulated, seemingly contributing to the progression of cancer development. A challenge in understanding this process is that HMW is difficult to study with most structural techniques, as it can be very large (megadaltons!) and highly dynamic. In this project, Pushpa outfitted HMW HA with 13C (and 15N) isotope labels, and shows that this makes multidimensional NMR (including solid-state NMR) feasible. This approach is expected to be valuable for many research areas, as HA is also important for many biomedical engineering (BME) type applications. ECM-mimicking hydrogels are for instance of great interest for engineering 3D environments for growing cells.
Publication:
Rampratap P, Lasorsa A, Perrone B, Van Der Wel PCA, Walvoort MTC. Production of isotopically enriched high molecular weight hyaluronic acid and characterization by solid-state NMR. Carbohydrate Polymers. 2023 Sep;316:121063.