High-performance liquid chromatographic purification of endogenous tumour cell growth inhibitory peptides

Five endogenous growth inhibitors of JB-1 ascites tumour cells have been further purified and characterized. Probably because of the high biological activity of most of the inhibitors which are low molecular weight peptides, these have been extremely difficult to handle using conventional purification methods. However, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) turned out to be a very powerful and useful technique in the last purification steps. Although many types of HPLC packings were tried, only a few of them (Nucleosil 5C-18 and Nucleosil 5CN) behaved satisfactorily for the present purpose.