Preparation of alpha-interferon

PURPOSE: To provide a method for preparing interferon-α by which the highly pure interferon-α is economically and efficiently obtained by allowing a vector having matured human interferon-α gene fused to Escherichia coli heat-stable enterotoxin signal sequence to express interferon-α in a cell. CONSTITUTION: This method for preparing interferon-α by the expression in Escherichia coli comprises preparing an expression vector by fusing a sequence encoding the interferon-α such as interferon-α2 of the formula to Escherichia coli heat-stable enterotoxin signal sequence, inducing the recombinant gene to the Escherichia coli to transform the Escherichia coli, culturing the transformed body in a medium, suspending the cultured liquid in 1% acetic acid by a homogenizer, separating the supernatant obtained by carrying out centrifugation of the extract of the obtained suspension, and subjecting the supernatant to a silica gel adsorption chromatography, a hydrophobic interaction chromatography, an ion exchange chromatography and the like in order to obtain the objective interferon-α. COPYRIGHT: (C)1995,JPO