Purification of highly radioactive mouse interferon produced by Ehrlich ascites tumour cells induced by Sendai virus.

Mouse interferon (IFN) was produced to high titres after induction of Ehrlich ascites tumour cells with Sendai virus by using an improved procedure. The IFN molecules were labelled during their synthesis by the incorporation of [3H]leucine and [3H]lysine. Electrophoretically homogeneous labelled IFN with a molecular weight of 34000 was obtained after a two-step purification procedure using poly(I)-agarose and octyl-Sepharose column chromatography followed by sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The specific radioactivity of this IFN was about 10 ct/min/IFN unit.