Sulfated polysaccharides fucoidan

Functional Properties of Brown Algal Sulfated Polysaccharides, Fucoidans... 

Marine algae are potentially prolific sources of highly bioactive components that might represent useful leads in the development of new pharmaceutical agents and functional foods. This chapter discusses the current literature on biological activities of sulfated polysaccharides, fucoidans, from brown seaweeds. The profound functional properties of fucoidans could be employed in pharmaceutical, nutraceutical functional food, and cosmeceutical... 

With the evidence from previous studies, brown algal sulfated polysaccharide, fucoidan attracted extensive interest in anticoagulative drug discovery. 

Fucan is a sulfated polysaccharide, naturally present in algae such as Fucus vesiculosus or Ascophyllum nodosum. Fucan is a general name for a mixture of three polysaccharides, and among them, fucoidan (or homofucan) can be theoretically considered as an homopolymer of a-1,2 L-fucose-4-sulfate and has been studied as a ligand in the same way as fucan himself. Their interaction with two proteins implicated in the coagulation process (thrombin and antithrombin) has been studied and is at least partially ionic. However, the dissociation of the complex fucan-antithrombin seems to include a slower step which could be attributed to a conformation change of the fucan [18]. 

TABLE 12.1 Biological activities of fucose-rich sulfated polysaccharides and fucoidan isolated from various brown seaweeds... 

Alekseyenko, T. V., Zhanayeva, S. Y., Venediktova, A. A., Zvyagintseva, T. N., Kuznetsova, T. A., Besednova, N. N., and Korolenko, T. A. (2007). Antitumor and antimetastatic activity of fucoidan, a sulfated polysaccharide isolated from the Okhotsk sea Fucus evanescens brown alga. Bull. Exp. Biol. Med. 143, 730-732. 

Kim, K. J., Lee, O. H., and Lee, B. Y. (2010a). Fucoidan, a sulfated polysaccharide, inhibits adipogenesis through the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway in 3T3-L1 preadipocytes. Life Sci. 86, 791-797. 

Li, C., Gao, Y., Xing, Y., Zhu, H., Shen, J., and Tian, J. (2011). Fucoidan, a sulfated polysaccharide from brown algae, against myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury in rats via regulating the inflammation response. Food Chem. Toxicol. 49, 2090-2095. 

Senni, K., Gueniche, F., Bertaud, A. F., Tchen, S. I., Fioretti, F., Jouault, S. C., Durand, P., Guezennec, J., Godeau, G., and Letourneur, D. (2006). Fucoidan a sulfated polysaccharide from brown algae is a potent modulator of connective tissue proteolysis. Arch. Biochem. Biophys. 445, 56-64. 

Antioxidant. Sulfated polysaccharides not only function as dietary fiber, but they also contribute to the antioxidant activity of seaweeds. It has been demonstrated that they exhibit potential antioxidant activity in vitro and several of them derived from brown seaweeds, such as fucoidan, laminaran, and alginic acid, have been shown as potent antioxidants (Rocha De Souza et ah, 2007 Ruperez et ah, 2002 Wang et ah, 2008, 2010). 

The detoxifying effect of different seaweeds in a Wistar rat model indicates that the presence of sulfated polysaccharides is crucial in the liver protecting effect of macroalgae (Costa et ah, 2010). Other studies have evidenced the protective effect of seaweeds against liver toxicity induced by galactosamine in a rat model, concluding that this protecting effect is partly mediated by fucoidan, a sulfated polysaccharide from the brown seaweed Laminaria (Kawano et ah, 2007). 

FIGURE 30.1 Sulfated polysaccharides derived from sea vegetables, (A) fucoidan, (B) carrageenan, and (C) ulvan. 

Fucan is a sulfated polysaccharide, naturally present in algae such as Fucus vesiculosus or Ascophyllum nodosum. Fucan is a general name for a mixtore of three polysaccharides among them, fucoidan (or homofucan) can be theoretically considered as an homopolymer of a-1,2... 

Rhodophycea), and brown algae (Phaeophycea), only the last two series are used on an industrial scale (168). Many different polysaccharides may be extracted but alginates and carrageenans are the more developed especially as physical gel formers (169). Fucoidans also are now under investigation because of the importance of sulfated polysaccharides for biological applications (170,171). 

Some sulfated polysaccharides of brovm algae, such as those isolated from the species Sargassum homeri, S. patens, and S. tenerrimum, also have antiviral properties although, except for their sugar composition, no information on the structure of these polysaccharides seems to have been published however, the high levels of fucose allow the consideration of structures similar to those of fucoidans (Hoshino et al., 1999 Zhu et al., 2003, 2004 Sinha et al, 2010). 

Varenne, A., Gareil, P., Colliec-Jouault, S., and Daniel, R. (2003) Capillary electrophoresis determination of the binding affinity of bioactive sulfated polysaccharides to proteins study of the binding properties of fucoidan to antithrombin. Arud. Biochem., 315, 152-159. 

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