Human skin and post-burn scar hyaluronan: demonstration of the association with collagen and other proteins.

Hyaluronan (HA) extracted from tissues has been demonstrated to have an enhancing effect on the process of wound healing; the question arises whether this effect is due to the HA or to associated collagen and other proteins. In this study, HA has been extracted from human skin and scar tissue under dissociative conditions and isolated by DEAE-cellulose chromatography followed by CsCl gradient and Sepharose CL-6B chromatography. This highly purified HA was found to contain between 4 and 28% protein, with collagen constituting 5% of the total protein. A functional association between HA and a collagen protein complex is proposed.