Robert Linhardt of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., and Jian Liu of the University of North Carolina, discovered the synthetic "recipe" for heparin in 2006. Since then, Linhardt has worked to piece together the various molecules and grow a complex carbohydrate that is naturally created in the body in the laboratory. The carbohydrate backbone for the new heparin comes from the bacteria E. coli.

"Unlike the current heparin that is harvested from possibly disease carrying animals in often very poor conditions, our fully synthetic heparin will be created in a pharmaceutical manufacturing environment from fermentation to packaging," Linhardt said in a statement.

The dose that Linhardt and his team were able to produce with this method was a million times higher than any other alternative created to date. Larger amounts of fully synthetic heparin could be ready for use in patients in five years, the researchers said.

The finding was presented at the national conference of the American Chemical Society.