Versican

Versican is a large extracellular matrix proteoglycan that is present in a variety of human tissues. It is encoded by the VCAN gene.

Versican is a large chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan with an apparent molecular mass of more than 1000kDa. In 1989, Zimmermann and Ruoslahti cloned and sequenced the core protein of fibroblast chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan. They designated it versican in recognition of its versatile modular structure.