The large-scale preparation of purified sporozoites of Eimeria spp. by metrizamide density-gradient centrifugation.

A method is described for the reproducible purification of greater than 1.0 X 10(8) sporozoites of Eimeria spp. by centrifugation on metrizamide density-gradients. The mean contamination of the purified sporozoite fraction by sporocysts and sporocyst debris was less than 6% and the recovered sporozoites were fully viable, infective and ultrastructurally intact.