Hyaluronic acid enzymatic polymerization

Ragan and Meyer (354) have recently reported hyaluronic acid contents and relative viscosities of synovial fluids from the knee joints of 35 patients with rheumatoid arthritis and 11 patients without joint diseases. They found with very few exceptions that the apparent degree of polymerization of the hyaluronic acid was lower in the arthritic patients, although the total amount of the mucopolysaccharide present was greater. Hyaluronidase was not detected in joint fluid or in synovial or periarticular tissue and, in any event, its presence would not explain the increase in total hyaluronic acid. Therefore, it was concluded that the defect lies not in an enzymatic hydrolysis or nonspecific depolymerization but in abnormal synthesis of this polysaccharide, involving an increased production of incompletely polymerized hyaluronic acid. 

For the polysaccharide synthesis, enzymatic polymerization has been developed as a new in vitro synthesis method of natural and unnatural polysaccharides having complicated structures.The method utilizes a hydrolysis enzyme to catalyze the bond formation for the polymer construction, a reverse direction of the hydrolysis to cleave the bond. This catalysis is due to the enzymatic characteristics, where enzymes catalyze the reverse reaction involving a common intermediate in both forward and backward reactions. In nature, there are many polysaccharides having N-acetyl groups called mucopolysaccharides such as chitin, hyaluronic acid (HA), and chondroitin (Ch). 

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