Synthetic heparin could be next step

The pursuit of a synthetic version of heparin, free of animal materials and made with stricter quality controls, is gaining more attention as awareness grows that the blood thinner can be sourced from an unregulated supply chain that starts with hog lots in rural China. "The reason we are pushing for the synthetic is that you can completely control the production process," said Jian Liu, associate professor of medicinal chemistry and natural products at the University of North Carolina School of Pharmacy, who is developing a synthetic heparin that is years from the U.S. market. "For the time being, we are stuck with the pig stuff. It has served us well for 50 years, but it was only a matter of time until something like this happened. It is too easy for the heparin extraction process to be contaminated if strict controls are not maintained."
The synthetic process purifies the drug and its ingredients every step of the way in laboratories, in contrast to the need for scrutiny of village workshops and farms in China that are now under investigation by U.S. and Chinese health officials.

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