Dermatan sulfate: Recent structural and activity data

DS is a natural, complex polysaccharide which plays an important role in cell growth, differentiation, morphogenesis, cell migration, and bacterial/viral infections. Although its clinical use is limited, DS performs interesting biological activities, which should help in the development of DS-based therapeutics, such as drugs for parasitic and viral infections, regenerative medicine, anti-tumor drugs, or simply as a marker of significant disease progression. Biological activities of DS chains are likely to involve various growth factors, and specific DS chains having distinctive structures and properties are able to recruit factors and/or potentiate their activities, suggesting that minute amounts of functional DS chains can be utilized as active biomolecules. To this aim, new bioactive sources of DS may represent potential drugs for future research and development, as well as for a better understanding of the structure–function relationship, and would enable the production of this polysaccharide with its distinctive composition, structure and biological activities.