Purification of nerve growth factor from the venom of the Central Asian cobra Naja oxiana

A highly purified electrophoreticaly homogeneous protein with a NGF activity of 10·105 BU/mg of protein have been isolated from the venom of the Central Asian cobra by gel-filtration and ion-exchange chromatography followed by preparative isolectric focusing in a thin layer of Sephadex. It has been shown that the NGF isolated is characterized by a molecular weight in the range of 20–30 kD and a pI value of about 7.0.