Intra-articularly administered medicine is fully metabolized in less than a week.Note that, according to Canadian regulation, hyaluronan in HY-50 preparation should not be administered to animals to be slaughtered for horse meat. In Europe, however, the same preparation is not considered to have any such effect, and edibility of the horse meat is not affected.Naked mole rats have very high molecular weight hyaluronan (6–12 MDa) that has been shown to give them resistance to cancer. This large HA is due to both differently sequenced HAS2 and lower HA degradation mechanisms. Research
Due to its high biocompatibility and its common presence in the extracellular matrix of tissues, hyaluronan is gaining popularity as a biomaterial scaffold in tissue engineering research. In particular, a number of research groups have found hyaluronans properties for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine are significantly improved with cross-linking, producing a hydrogel. The pioneering work on crosslinked hyaluronan derivatives was initiated by a small research group headed by Prof. Aurelio Romeo in the late 1980s. Crosslinking allows a researcher to form a desired shape, as well as to deliver therapeutic molecules, into a host. Hyaluronan can be crosslinked by attaching thiols (trade names: Extracel, HyStem), methacrylates, hexadecylamides (trade name: Hymovis), and tyramines (trade name: Corgel). Hyaluronan can also be crosslinked directly with formaldehyde (trade name: Hylan-A) or with divinylsulfone (trade name: Hylan-B).Due to its ability to regulate angiogenesis by stimulating endothelial cells to proliferate, hyaluronan can be used to create hydrogels to study vascular morphogenesis.
These hydrogels have properties similar to human soft tissue, but are also easily controlled and modified, making HA very suitable for tissue-engineering studies. For example, HA hydrogels are appealing for engineering vasculature from endothelial progenitor cells by using appropriate growth factors such as VEGF and Ang-1 to promote proliferation and vascular network formation. Vacuole and lumen formation have been observed in these gels, followed by branching and sprouting through degradation of the hydrogel and finally complex network formation. The ability to generate vascular networks using HA hydrogels leads to opportunities for in vivo and clinical applications. One in vivo study, where HA hydrogels with endothelial colony forming cells were implanted into mice three days after hydrogel formation, saw evidence that the host and engineered vessels joined within 2 weeks of implantation, indicating viability and functionality of the engineered vasculature.Hyaluronic acid-mediated drug delivery system was deemed useful for targeting inflammatory skin diseases condition. See also
Alguronic acid
Sodium hyaluronate

References
External links
ATC codes: D03AX05 (WHO), M09AX01 (WHO), R01AX09 (WHO), S01KA01 (WHO)
Hyaluronan at the US National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)