Purification and characterization of acidic fibroblast growth factor from bovine brain.

Abstract
Acidic brain fibroblast growth factor was purified a minimum of 35,000-fold to apparent homogeneity by a combination of differential salt precipitation, ion exchange chromatography, gel filtration, isoelectric focusing and hydrophobic chromatography on a C4 reversed-phase HPLC [high performance liquid chromatography] column. Two microheterogeneous forms of the molecule are obtained with apparent MW of 16,600 and 16,800 daltons. The mitogen is highly active with half-maximal stimulation of BALB/c 3T3 fibroblasts at .apprx. 40 pg/ml in an assay using incorporation of [methyl-3H]thymidine into DNA.