• Journal of Life Science
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.545-554
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• 2016

Hyaluronic acid (HA) is an important macromolecule in medical and pharmaceutical fields. HA is a natural and linear polymer composed of repeating disaccharide units of β-1, 3-N-acetyl glucosamine and β-1, 4-glucuronic acid. This work aimed to confirm the structural characteristics and anti-inflammatory activities of HA and its chemically sulfated-HA. HA was produced from a fed-batch fermentation process using Streptococcus dysgalactiae in a 5 l bioreactor. HA was isolated water-soluble form (HA-WS) and water-insoluble form (HA-WI) from culture medium, and was obtained chemically sulfated-derivative (S-HA) that resulted in a 90% yield from HA-WI. The structural features of the sulfated- HA (S-HA) were investigated by FT-IR and ¹H-NMR spectroscopy. The FT-IR and NMR patterns revealed the similarity in both the FTIR spectrum as well as NMR spectrum of both reference standard and purified HA from S. dysgalactiae. The anti-inflammatory activities of HA and S-HA were examined on LPS-induced RAW 264.7 cells. S-HA was significantly inhibited production of pro-inflammatory mediators such as nitric oxide (NO) and PGE₂ and the gene levels of iNOS and COX-2, which are responsible for the production of NO and PGE₂, respectively. Furthermore, S-HA also suppressed the overproduction of pro-inflammatory cytokine TNF-α (<80 pg/ml) and IL-6 (<100 pg/ml) compared to that of HA-WI. The present study clearly demonstrates that HA-S exhibits anti-inflammatory activities in RAW 264.7 macrophage cells.