Quality control of proteoglycan obtained from salmon nasal cartilage in dietary supplements

Abstract

Aggrecan, which is a chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan (CSPG), has been considered as a superior functional nutraceutical for the treatment of joint diseases and other immune system diseases when compared to chondroitin sulfate (CS). The industrial production of CSPG generally employs salmon nasal cartilage, and the quality control of CSPG is required to meet the regulations for nutraceutical products prepared from natural resources. Although there are several commercially available nutraceuticals that contain CSPG as a major component, the quality and quantity of CSPG in each supplement are not guaranteed. This paper presents a simple, rapid, and reliable analytical approach for the quality control of CSPG during production, where electrophoresis, gel filtration HPLC, and CS unsaturated disaccharide analysis with CS degradation enzymes were employed. Finally, the quality of CSPG obtained from different extraction and purification processes were confirmed using these newly developed analytical procedures.