Identification of trypsin inhibitor in bovine pituitary extracts as a survival factor for adult rat hepatocytes in primary culture.

Adult rat hepatocytes in primary culture cannot survive more than 2 days in the absence of calf serum. An extract of bovine pituitary gland had a similar effect to calf serum on the survival of hepatocytes, but its specific activity was 70 times that of calf serum. The survival factor was purified from bovine pituitary gland, and obtained in a homogeneous state judging by sodium dodecylsulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and high performance liquid chromatography. Its purification was achieved by acid extraction of the pituitary gland, gel filtrations on Sephadex G-75 and Ultrogel AcA 202, ion-exchanger chromatography on CM-cellulose, and then reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography. The purified factor was effective at 10 ng/ml and maximally effective at 100 ng/ml. The overall recovery of its activity was 30%, and the specific activity of the purified factor was 3,100 times that in the acid extract. The molecular weight (Mr 8,000), estimated by Sephadex G-200 filtration, and the strong basic character (pI 10.5) of the purified survival factor suggested that it may be the trypsin inhibitor found in various tissues. Indeed, the amino acid composition of the pure material was identical with that of bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor (bPTI). The purified survival factor had the same inhibitory activity on trypsin as commercial bPTI and, conversely, commercial bPTI greatly enhanced survival of rat hepatocytes. Thus, the survival factor in bovine pituitary gland was identified as bPTI.