DESCRIPTION.
Purified from horse neck ligament by proprietary hydrolysis method. The ligament is manually freed of gross connective tissue, fat and muscle then pulverized. The mulch is boiled in water to remove soluble proteins then boiled in alkali to remove resistant proteins and collagen. The washed insoluble mulch is hydrolyzed with elastase and further purified by cellulose chromatography and lyophilized.
Elastin No. WE99 is highly soluble in water, buffers and detergents. The molecular weight range by gel filtration chromatography is 1,000 to 60,000 indicating a mixture of peptides. These peptides contain the cross-linked amino acids desmosine and isodesmosine. Similarly prepared elastin peptides have been reported to stimulate migration of human skin fibroblasts, (Senior et.al., J. Clin. Invest. vol. 70 p. 614, 1982).