Heparan Sulfate Products for COVID-19 Infection, Disease & Therapeutics Research

Heparan Sulfate (HS) is increasingly recognised as a key factor in infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is the cause of the current COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic. Using HS antibodies from AMSBIO, researchers have demonstrated that Heparanase enzyme contributes to the pathogenesis of COVID-19, with both Heparanase activity and HS levels being elevated in plasma of Covid-19 patients. In addition, recent published data has shown that Heparanase activity is further elevated in ICU patients on ventilators compared to less serious cases.

In particular, JM403 Heparan Sulfate antibody supplied by AMSBIO has been used in two novel assays developed and applied by Prof. Dr. Johan van der Vlag and colleagues at the Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, Netherlands. They developed a JM403-based plasma heparanase activity assay, and a JM403-based HS competition ELISA to measure plasma HS levels**.

Prof. Dr. Johan van der Vlag said “The JM403 antibody from AMSBIO is a unique and powerful tool that is helping us develop new assays to measure plasma heparanase and HS levels in patients with COVID-19. A particular advantage of JM403 is that it is not reacting with heparins, which would have been a disturbing factor in our analyses, and which now allowed us to evaluate the effect of treating COVID-19 patients with low molecular weight heparins.”

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