Heparin

Heparin, a natural anticoagulant, is a kind of sulfated glycosaminoglycans. The molecule is a chain structure consisting of repeated hexose or octose units, and its main disaccharide units is trithionicacid disaccharide. Heparin presents in various mammalian tissues including liver、lung、heart、spleen、kidney、thymus、intestinal mucosa、muscle and blood. Thus heparin can be extracted from porcine intestinal mucosa and lung or bovine lung. Heparin, along with other mucopolysaccharides, binds to proteins in tissues to form complexes, so the process of heparin production consists of two steps: extraction of heparin-protein complexes, dissociation and isolation and purification of heparin.