Today’s Boston Globe ran a profile of Ram Sasisekharan, the MIT-based senior author of the papers published on 23 April in NEJM and in Nature Biotech., identifying the contaminant in heparin that caused adverse effects and even killed scores of people earlier this year.

Through careful structural analysis, Sasisekharan and his colleagues found that the culprit was oversulfated chondroitin sulfate and that, owing to the chemical nature of the contaminant, conventional screening methods cannot differentiate between clean and tainted lots. Then, using in vitro and in vivo approaches, they went on to show that the mechanism of action of the contaminant involved the activation of the kinin-kallikrein and the complement systems.

It was an remarkable tour de force, particularly considering that, according to the profile, the FDA approached Sasisekharan with the project only in late February, the published submission date of the Nature Biotech. paper is 21 March, and the mechanistic work had apparently been finished by early April. Pretty impressive stuff that, I hope, will inspire those prospective Nature Medicine authors whom we invite to resubmit their work and, alas, are occasionally scooped.

Ram Sasisekharan (Photo: David Shopper, The Boston Globe)