Fucoidan molecular weight

Fucoidan is contained inside the mucous substance found in brown seaweeds such as mozuku, ("Cladosiphon ocamuranus tokida"), wakame ("Undaria pinnatifida"), mekabu (part of wakame seaweed where the germ cells are gathered), kombu ("Laminaria japonica") and others. When dried kombu seaweed is soaked for some time in water, you can see a lot of this mucous substance oozing out. Seaweeds are a perfect choice to balance the diets of modern people, which tend to lack calcium, iodium, iron and other minerals. A diverse diet is often given as an explanation of the longevity of the Japanese (especially of those living in Okinawa), but many researchers pay special attention to the benefits that they obtain through consuming large amounts of seaweeds. Seaweeds are good for our health not only because they contain a lot of minerals and are low in calories. Components contained inside the mucous substance of the seaweeds attract most of the attention of modern scientists. For example it was discovered that seaweed components such as alginic acid help control cholesterol absorption from food and laminin can help lower high blood pressure. Most importantly, this mucous substance is known to contain fucoidan, a substance efficient for treating not only tumors but also diabetes, gastric ulcers, hypertension, chronic hepatitis, atopic dermatitis and other medical conditions. Fucoidan, similar to beta-glucans contained in many mushrooms, is a polysaccharide and is mostly composed of sugar-building blocks called "fucose". Fucoidan contains especially large amounts of fucose equipped with sulphate radicals, which are considered efficient for restraining the growth of cancerous cells. Polysaccharides are the substances composed of the multiple sugar molecules, which are stable and are connected in chains of 10,000 links and more.

These polysaccharides are of high molecular weight in their natural form and, because of this, cannot be fully absorbed inside the human digestive tract.

With the advance of technology, manufacturers are now able to offer new medicines and health supplement foods with functional ingredients of lower molecular weight, which greatly improves their health properties. Similar to other biologically active elements, for fucoidan to harness its full power, it needs to be in an easily absorbable form. For people weakened by chemotherapy and the like the digestive absorption ability is even lower, so extra attention is needed to make the functional material absorb more easily. Adjusting the molecular weight of fucoidan, i.e. making it smaller, is considered beneficial to help achieve this purpose. As a general rule, the longer these chains are, the more difficult it is to absorb them inside the human intestines. As a result, large portions of polysaccharides are treated in our intestines as a dietary fiber, which as a matter of fact has its benefits: it stimulates the bowels and improves the intestinal bacterial environment. Still in order for the apoptosis phenomenon that causes cancerous cells to commit suicide to take place, fucoidan must reach the focus of cancer cells. This explains why high molecular weight fucoidan is more efficient in treating gastric and intestinal cancers and is less efficient with other types of cancer. This weak point of macro-molecular fucoidan is thought to be overcome by making it of smaller size and thus enabling it to enter the bloodstream from the digestive tract more smoothly. By achieving this, there are great expectations of fucoidan in treating pancreatic cancer and other types of cancer that are considered more difficult to treat. Low molecular weight fucoidan is believed to be absorbed more easily through the digestive tract and to concentrate near cancerous cells inducing apoptosis in them.

Why is it that fucoidan moleculae are attracted to the cancerous cells?

Multiple nutrients get absorbed through the human digestive tract, get into the bloodstream and travel inside our circulatory system. One of these nutrients, the fucoidan substance, is thought to get drawn to and accumulate near cancerous cells. This happens because fucoidan is a relative of sugar, the easiest source of energy inside of our bodies. Gluttonous cancer cells especially strive to obtain sugars and amino acids among other nutrients brought with the bloodstream. Consequently sugars inside our bodies tend to accumulate near cancerous cells. This fact was used to develop the PET (Positron Emission Tomography), the latest diagnostics technology, which uses color-coding of the glucose distribution in our bodies—the spots near the cancer cells are colored bright red. Akin to the pesticides that are first carried by ants to their nest, and later destroy the nest from the inside, the fucoidan substance is also drawn closer to cancer cells, which helps it trigger the apoptosis phenomenon. There are several known ways to lower the fucoidan molecular weight. In fucoidan polysaccharide in its natural form the sugar moleculas are firmly connected together in long chains, which makes it a hard task to decompose it and absorb inside the human digestive tract. Despite this, nature has found a way to easily decompose this durable polysaccharide substance. For example shellfish such as turban shell and abalone are capable of consuming multiple seaweeds and turning them into energy. This is possible due to a special enzyme, which these shellfish secrete, cutting fucoidan polysaccharide chains into multiple pieces. Many new fucoidan products (with molecular weight below 500) are using these enzymes to make fucoidan of molecular weight that even humans can easily absorb. In fact producing low molecular weight fucoidan takes more technological stages (for example ultrafiltration) to complete. Still, it would not be true to say that the lower the fucoidan molecular weight the better. Big fucoidan moleculas are known to accumulate inside the human intestines and improve its environment and thus subsequently create a secondary immune system strengthening effect. This makes adjusting the fucoidan molecular weight a necessary though complicated process. Multiple studies currently performed in Japan and other countries should give more insight into how fucoidan molecular weight can influence its health properties.