- Cress, Brady F;
- Bhaskar, Ujjwal;
- Vaidyanathan, Deepika;
- Williams, Asher;
- Cai, Chao;
- Liu, Xinyue;
- Fu, Li;
- M‐Chari, Vandhana;
- Zhang, Fuming;
- Mousa, Shaker A;
- Dordick, Jonathan S;
- Koffas, Mattheos AG;
- Linhardt, Robert J
Heparin is a highly sulfated, complex polysaccharide and widely used anticoagulant pharmaceutical. In this work, we chemoenzymatically synthesized perdeuteroheparin from biosynthetically enriched heparosan precursor obtained from microbial culture in deuterated medium. Chemical de-N-acetylation, chemical N-sulfation, enzymatic epimerization, and enzymatic sulfation with recombinant heparin biosynthetic enzymes afforded perdeuteroheparin comparable to pharmaceutical heparin. A series of applications for heavy heparin and its heavy biosynthetic intermediates are demonstrated, including generation of stable isotope labeled disaccharide standards, development of a non-radioactive NMR assay for glucuronosyl-C5-epimerase, and background-free quantification of in vivo half-life following administration to rabbits. We anticipate that this approach can be extended to produce other isotope-enriched glycosaminoglycans.