抄録
Various proteoglycan (PG) molecules have been identified in the liver ECM. Large part of the hepatic PGs belongs to a group of heparan sulfate PGs, which mainly exist in association with plasma membrane of the hepatic cells. While a family of chondroitin sulfate (CS) PGs takes only a small part of the hepatic PGs and were mainly found in association with fibril collagens of insoluble ECM. Decorin and biglycan, both of which belong to small CS/DS-PGs, were recently isolated from hepatic insoluble ECM. These small CS/DS PGs inhibited the formation of monolayer of hepatocytes when immobilized on the culture dish, resulted in inducing the formation of multicellular spheroids in the primary culture. The multicellular spheroid appeared to be a tridimensional assembly of biologically active hepatocytes which retained various differentiated morphological features and functions. While HS-PG derived from EHS sarcoma did not show the spheroid forming ability, Similar difference in spheroid forming ability between CS and HS was found also with proteoglycan analogs of synthetic GAG-phospholipid. In this article we described about the difference in a biological aspect of CS- and HS-PGs proteoglycans with a special interest on the spheroid formation.
