POLYSACCHARIDES & QUANTUM DOT TECHNOLOGY
Ginseng Polysaccharides
We are interested in the R&D of ginseng polysaccharides because:
1. There is a lack of understanding of the phytochemistry and pharmacology of ginseng polysaccharides.
a. The two major bioactive chemical components of ginseng are ginsenosides and polysaccharides. Ginseng polysaccharides (GPS) account for 10-20% by weight of ginseng root.
b. The major active component of one commercially available natural health product, Cold Fx, is crude PS isolated from AM ginseng roots. Crude polysaccharide may contain antagonistic components that counteract polysaccharides effects.
c. Therefore, research devoted to purification and structure analysis of polysaccharide is vital to understand and enhance our use of GPS.
2. Biological activity and medicinal application. Recent studies have revealed a wide range of biological activities.
a. GPSs have different biological activities including immunomodulatory, antibacterial, antimutagenic, radioprotective, anti-oxidative, anti-ulcer, antidepressant, anti-septicemic and anti-inflammatory activities.
b. Specifically, the GPS has been shown to have immunomodulatory effects in both preclinical and clinical studies, although they are poorly characterized.
c. GPS reported not only to have direct but also indirect effect in promoting the absorption of saponins which regulate intestinal metabolism and restore homeostasis of gut microbiota.
3. Chemistry
a. GPS is a natural polymer of complex macromolecular structure and diverse molecular weights ranging within 10 to 10 Da.
b. GPSs are mainly monosaccharides attached in a linear or branched chains through glycosidic linkages.
c. GPSs are mainly composed of acidic polysaccharides containing pectin and neutral polysaccharides including amyloid mixtures, dextrans, and arabinogalactans.
3
5
GPS structure composed of monosaccharides chains containing D-galactose, L-arabinose, D-galacturonic acid, L-rhamnose, and D-galatosyl residues connected through glycosidic bonds. Fourier transform infared (FT-IR) spectroscopy provide information about the functional groups and structural characteristics of GPS where studies confirmed the presence of β-linked α-linked sugar residues.
4. Challenges: heterogeneity
Despite their various pharmacological applications, structure-activity relationship and exact mechanism of GPS action still struggling because:
a. Crude polysaccharides are mixture of macromolecules with different degrees of polymerization which means polysaccharides have very complex structure and high heterogeneity.
b. The absence of functional group in the backbone structure that can be easily detected spectroscopically.
We isolate crude polysaccharides (PS) from water extracts of American ginseng roots...
Ginseng polysaccharides (GPS) are extracted by various extraction methods involving cell-wall destruction to release soluble components. At our company we extract PS from American ginseng roots using hot water extraction which is the most efficient laboratory extraction method and industrially adopted.
We fractionate them according to molecular size
Our approach involves fractionating the GPS solution applying tangential flow filtration to yield fractions to different molecular sizes to ease the identification and post treatment.
