Chemical Approaches to Prepare Modified Heparin and Heparosan Polymers for Biological Studies.

Heparin is a potent clinically used anticoagulant. It is a heterogeneous mixture of polymers that contain a variety of sulfation patterns. Heparin polymers carrying rare 3-O-sulfated glucosamine units have been proven to be critical for binding to antithrombin and elicit an anticoagulant response. Heparins with other sulfation patterns are able to bind to a variety of other proteins such as FGF, VEGF, and CXCL-3. By modulating heparin's sulfation pattern, it is possible to generate polymers that can regulate biological processes beyond hemostasis. In this chapter, we describe a variety of chemical modification methods, including N-acetylation, N-deacetylation, N-sulfation, O-sulfation, selective 2-O desulfation, and complete desulfation, to prepare heparin-like polymers with distinct sulfation patterns for conducting biological studies.

BODIPY-Conjugated Xyloside Primes Fluorescent Glycosaminoglycans in the Inner Ear of Opsanus tau.

We report on a new xyloside conjugated to BODIPY, BX and its utility to prime fluorescent glycosaminoglycans (BX-GAGs) within the inner ear in vivo. When BX is administered directly into the endolymphatic space of the oyster toadfish (Opsanus tau) inner ear, fluorescent BX-GAGs are primed and become visible in the sensory epithelia of the semicircular canals, utricle, and saccule. Confocal and 2-photon microscopy of vestibular organs fixed 4 h following BX treatment, reveal BX-GAGs constituting glycocalyces that envelop hair cell kinocilium, nerve fibers, and capillaries. In the presence of GAG-specific enzymes, the BX-GAG signals are diminished, suggesting that chondroitin sulfates are the primary GAGs primed by BX. Results are consistent with similar click-xylosides in CHO cell lines, where the xyloside enters the Golgi and preferentially initiates chondroitin sulfate B production. Introduction of BX produces a temporary block of hair cell mechanoelectrical transduction (MET) currents in the crista, reduction in background discharge rate of afferent neurons, and a reduction in sensitivity to physiological stimulation. A six-degree-of-freedom pharmacokinetic mathematical model has been applied to interpret the time course and spatial distribution of BX and BX-GAGs. Results demonstrate a new optical approach to study GAG biology in the inner ear, for tracking synthesis and localization in real time.

Chemical modification of heparin and heparosan.

Heparin is a potent clinically used anticoagulant. It is a heterogeneous mixture of polymers that contain a variety of sulfation patterns. However, only 3-O sulfonated heparin pentasaccharide units have been proven to bind to antithrombin and elicit an anticoagulant response. Heparins with other sulfation patterns are able to bind to a variety of other proteins such as FGF, VEGF, and CXCL-3. By modulating heparin's sulfation pattern, it is possible to generate polymers that can regulate biological processes beyond hemostasis. Here we describe a variety of simple chemical modification methods, N-acetylation, N-deacetylation, N-sulfation, O-sulfation, 2-O desulfation, and complete desulfation, to prepare heparin-like polymers with distinct sulfation patterns.

Chemogenesis of an antiangiogenic glycosaminoglycan.

In this letter we report a facile chemical conversion of heparin, a potent anticoagulant with minimal antiangiogenic activity, into an effective antiangiogenic glycosaminoglycan through optimized chemical approaches. This work highlights the potential for industrial scale production of a therapeutic anticancer glycosaminoglycan.

ELECTRON DETACHMENT DISSOCIATION OF SYNTHETIC HEPARAN SULFATE GLYCOSAMINOGLYCAN TETRASACCHARIDES VARYING IN DEGREE OF SULFATION AND HEXURONIC ACID STEREOCHEMISTRY.

Glycosaminoglycan (GAG) carbohydrates provide a challenging analytical target for structural determination due to their polydisperse nature, non-template biosynthesis, and labile sulfate modifications. The resultant structures, although heterogeneous, contain domains which indicate a sulfation pattern or code that correlates to specific function. Mass spectrometry, in particular electron detachment dissociation Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (EDD FT-ICR MS), provides a highly sensitive platform for GAG structural analysis by providing cross-ring cleavages for sulfation location and product ions specific to hexuronic acid stereochemistry. To investigate the effect of sulfation pattern and variations in stereochemistry on EDD spectra, a series of synthetic heparan sulfate (HS) tetrasaccharides are examined. Whereas previous studies have focused on lowly sulfated compounds (0.5-1 sulfate groups per disaccharide), the current work extends the application of EDD to more highly sulfated tetrasaccharides (1-2 sulfate groups per disaccharide) and presents the first EDD of a tetrasaccharide containing a sulfated hexuronic acid. For these more highly sulfated HS oligomers, alternative strategies are shown to be effective for extracting full structural details. These strategies inlcude sodium cation replacement of protons, for determining the sites of sulfation, and desulfation of the oligosaccharides for the generation of product ions for assigning uronic acid stereochemistry.

A synthetic heparan sulfate oligosaccharide library reveals the novel enzymatic action of D-glucosaminyl 3-O-sulfotransferase-3a.

Heparan sulfate (HS) glucosaminyl 3-O-sulfotranferases sulfate the C3-hydroxyl group of certain glucosamine residues on heparan sulfate. Six different 3-OST isoforms exist, each of which can sulfate very distinct glucosamine residues within the HS chain. Among these isoforms, 3-OST1 has been shown to play a role in generating ATIII-binding HS anticoagulants whereas 3-OST2, 3-OST3, 3-OST4 and 3OST-6 have been shown to play a vital role in generating gD-binding HS chains that permit the entry of herpes simplex virus type 1 into cells. 3-OST5 has been found to generate both ATIII- and gD-binding HS motifs. Previous studies have examined the substrate specificities of all the 3-OST isoforms using HS polysaccharides. However, very few studies have examined the contribution of the epimer configuration of neighboring uronic acid residues next to the target site to 3-OST action. In this study, we utilized a well-defined synthetic oligosaccharide library to examine the substrate specificity of 3-OST3a and compared it to 3-OST1. We found that both 3-OST1 and 3-OST3a preferentially sulfate the 6-O-sulfated, N-sulfoglucosamine when an adjacent iduronyl residue is located to its reducing side. On the other hand, 2-O-sulfation of this uronyl residue can inhibit the action of 3-OST3a on the target residue. The results reveal novel substrate sites for the enzyme actions of 3-OST3a. It is also evident that both these enzymes have promiscuous and overlapping actions that are differentially regulated by iduronyl 2-O-sulfation.

Negative electron transfer dissociation Fourier transform mass spectrometry of glycosaminoglycan carbohydrates.

Electron transfer through gas phase ion-ion reactions has led to the widespread application of electron- based techniques once only capable in ion trapping mass spectrometers. Although any mass analyzer can in theory be coupled to an ion-ion reaction device (typically a 3-D ion trap), some systems of interest exceed the capabilities of most mass spectrometers. This case is particularly true in the structural characterization of glycosaminoglycan (GAG) oligosaccharides. To adequately characterize highly sulfated GAGs or oligosaccharides above the tetrasaccharide level, a high resolution mass analyzer is required. To extend previous efforts on an ion trap mass spectrometer, negative electron transfer dissociation coupled with a Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometer has been applied to increasingly sulfated heparan sulfate and heparin tetrasaccharides as well as a dermatan sulfate octasaccharide. Results similar to those obtained by electron detachment dissociation are observed.

Multivariate analysis of electron detachment dissociation and infrared multiphoton dissociation mass spectra of heparan sulfate tetrasaccharides differing only in hexuronic acid stereochemistry.

The structural characterization of glycosaminoglycan (GAG) carbohydrates by mass spectrometry has been a long-standing analytical challenge due to the inherent heterogeneity of these biomolecules, specifically polydispersity, variability in sulfation, and hexuronic acid stereochemistry. Recent advances in tandem mass spectrometry methods employing threshold and electron-based ion activation have resulted in the ability to determine the location of the labile sulfate modification as well as assign the stereochemistry of hexuronic acid residues. To facilitate the analysis of complex electron detachment dissociation (EDD) spectra, principal component analysis (PCA) is employed to differentiate the hexuronic acid stereochemistry of four synthetic GAG epimers whose EDD spectra are nearly identical upon visual inspection. For comparison, PCA is also applied to infrared multiphoton dissociation spectra (IRMPD) of the examined epimers. To assess the applicability of multivariate methods in GAG mixture analysis, PCA is utilized to identify the relative content of two epimers in a binary mixture.

Modular synthesis of heparan sulfate oligosaccharides for structure-activity relationship studies.

Although hundreds of heparan sulfate binding proteins have been identified and implicated in a myriad of physiological and pathological processes, very little information is known about the ligand requirements for binding and mediating biological activities by these proteins. This difficulty results from a lack of technology for establishing structure-activity relationships, which in turn is due to the structural complexity of natural heparan sulfate (HS) and difficulties of preparing well-defined HS oligosaccharides. To address this deficiency, we developed a modular approach for the parallel combinatorial synthesis of HS oligosaccharides that utilizes a relatively small number of selectively protected disaccharide building blocks, which can easily be converted into glycosyl donors and acceptors. The utility of the modular building blocks has been demonstrated by the preparation of a library of 12 oligosaccharides, which has been employed to probe the structural features of HS for inhibiting the protease, BACE-1. The complex variations in activity with structural changes support the view that important functional information is embedded in HS sequences. Furthermore, the most active derivative provides an attractive lead compound for the preparation of more potent compounds, which may find use as a therapeutic agent for Alzheimer's disease.