Abstract
(1) Background: Brown and red algal sulfated polysaccharides have been widely described as anticoagulant agents. However, data on green algae, especially on the Ulva genus, are limited. This study aimed at isolating ulvan from the green macroalga Ulva rigida using an acid- and solvent-free procedure, and investigating the effect of sulfate content on the anticoagulant activity of this polysaccharide. (2) Methods: The obtained ulvan fraction was chemically sulfated, leading to a doubling of the polysaccharide sulfate content in a second ulvan fraction. The potential anticoagulant activity of both ulvan fractions was then assessed using different assays, targeting the intrinsic and/or common (activated partial thromboplastin time), extrinsic (prothrombin time), and common (thrombin time) pathways, and the specific antithrombin-dependent pathway (anti-Xa and anti-IIa), of the coagulation cascade. Furthermore, their anticoagulant properties were compared to those of commercial anticoagulants: heparin and Lovenox®. (3) Results: The anticoagulant activity of the chemically-sulfated ulvan fraction was stronger than that of Lovenox® against both the intrinsic and extrinsic coagulation pathways. (4) Conclusion: The chemically-sulfated ulvan fraction could be a very interesting alternative to heparins, with different targets and a high anticoagulant activity.
Highlights
Marine macroalgae are used in several industrial applications and have represented a sharply increasing annual market over the last decades, going from about USD 6 billion in 2003 to currently USD 10.6 billion, and exhibiting an annual growth rate close to 10%, due to the high expansion of the aquaculture sector, which represents today 97% of the global seaweed production worldwide [1,2,3]
The sulfation procedure was carried out starting from 500 mg of ULVAN-01 fraction, to give 200 mg of ULVAN-02 fraction
A solvent- and acid-free procedure was developed to extract and purify ulvan from U. rigida, providing an ulvan fraction of high purity (ULVAN-01), with less than 4% of contaminant proteins remaining at the end of the procedure
Summary
Marine macroalgae are used in several industrial applications and have represented a sharply increasing annual market over the last decades, going from about USD 6 billion in 2003 to currently USD 10.6 billion, and exhibiting an annual growth rate close to 10%, due to the high expansion of the aquaculture sector, which represents today 97% of the global seaweed production worldwide [1,2,3]. It has been shown that sulfated polysaccharides from marine macroalgae have numerous biological activities, including immunoinflammatory [6,7,8], antioxidant [9,10], antitumor [11,12,13], antiviral [7,14,15,16], and anticoagulant [17,18,19,20] properties. They have been consumed for centuries, Mar. Drugs 2019, 17, 291; doi:10.3390/md17050291 www.mdpi.com/journal/marinedrugs
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