A Hope: Contaminant-Free Synthetic Heparin

HealthDay, August, 2008 by Ed Edelson, HealthDay Reporter

Robert J. Linhardt is a chemist with a dream: making the blood-thinner heparin by the bucketful without using animal tissue.

pig intestines processed in China.

That processing often is done in small mom-and-pop workshops, a situation conducive to contamination, said Linhardt, a professor of chemistry, biology and chemical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

"Our group has been working on understanding heparin biosynthesis for almost 30 years," he said. "We are working on what might be the next generation of heparin production, with no animal source."

Heparin has been made synthetically in the recent past but only in microscopically small amounts. Scheduled to speak Sunday at the American Chemical Society annual meeting, in...