Patent ID: 7018837

Claim:
An isolated nucleic acid encoding a polypeptide which stimulates release of proteoglycans from cartilage tissue and having at least 95% nucleic acid sequence identity to: (a) a nucleic acid sequence encoding the polypeptide shown in FIG. 2 (SEQ ID NO:2); (b) a nucleic acid sequence encoding the polypeptide shown in FIG. 2 (SEQ ID NO:2), lacking its associated signal peptide; (c) the nucleic acid sequence shown in FIG. 1 (SEQ ID NO:1); (d) the full-length coding sequence of the nucleic acid sequence shown in FIG. 1 (SEQ ID NO:1); or (e) the full-length coding sequence of the cDNA deposited under ATCC accession number 209526.