sialic acid

Molecular Weight:  309.27

CAS No.:  131-48-6  

Melting point: 184-186

Specific rotation:-32° (c=2, water)

Solubility:50 g/L (20)

Product form:Colorless crystal

Purity:  ≥98%.  Product of E. coli fermentation.

Acetic acid: 0.1% Maximum (no acetic acid odor)

Applications

    Sialic acid, also known as N-Acetylneuraminic acid (Neu5Ac), is a natural and common carbohydrate component of many animal (including human) glycoproteins, mucopolysaccharides and glycolipids.  Sialic acid is also found in certain bacteria such as Escherichia coli and Neisseria menungitidis.

    Addition of sialic acid through the process of hypersialation improves the overall therapeutic efficacies of many key biopharmaceutical proteins, including cholinesterases (Saxena et al. Biochemistry, 36: 7481, 1997), asparaginase (Fernandes, A.I. and Gregoriadis, G. Int. J. Pharm., 217: 215, 2001), erythropoietin (Elliott, S. et al. J. Biol. Chem., 279: 16854, 2004) and luteinizing hormone (Burgon, P.G. et al. Endocrinology, 137: 4827, 1996). Recently, A FAD approved agent of Sialic acid derivative synthesized from Sialic acid is being used for treatment of bird flu by GSK. The product named Zanamivir is a strong inhibitor for the viral neuraminidase (von Itzstein M. et al. Nature. 363: 418, 1993).

    Sialic acid and its derivatives have been used in the treatments of several diseases, including neuropathic and inflammatory disease as well as certain tumors (Witczak, Z.J. and Nieforth, K.A. Carbohydrate in Drugs Design, Marcel Dekker, New York, 1997).

    The development of the infant human brain requires a large amount of sialic acid.  Human milk usually contains a lot of sialic acid but cow milk-based infant formulas contain low amount of sialic acid and soy milk-based infant formulas have no sialic acid.  Consequently, supplementation of sialic acid to infant milk is necessary to promote health brain development in infants (Martin, M.J. et al. Anal. Bioanal. Chem., 387: 2943, 2007).