High pressure to treat aggregated interferons, particularly recombinant human
interferon-β, to reduce the aggregate content of
interferon material. Highly pure, soluble monomeric
recombinant interferon-β is prepared in representative embodiments. Multiple strategies may be used in combination that make nonglycosylated IFN-β more amenable to
high pressure treatment. It has been found that refolding yields of
high pressure treatment can be significantly improved by use of a combination of strategies, including, or example a pre-treatment of the IFN-β that involves solubilizing and then precipitating the
protein. This pre-treatment is particularly effective with respect to recombinant IFN-β
inclusion bodies recovered from host cells such as E. coli cells. According to another strategy, refolding under
high pressure is much more effective when the refolding
reagent incorporating the IFN-β incorporates a zwitterionic surfactant and / or a cholate salt. When a solubilization and
precipitation pre-treatment is used, the effectiveness of the high pressure treatment is further enhanced when the refolding
reagent incorporating the
protein incorporates a disulfide
shuffling chemistry such as
cysteine /
cystine. According to still yet another strategy, high pressure treatment is more effective when using atypically high treatment pressures. When coupled with purification techniques, these strategies singly or in combination provide a low aggregate or substantially aggregate free, biologically active solution. Biologically active solutions comprising nonglycosylated
interferon, said interferon comprising less than about 5 weight percent of
protein aggregation has been found to exhibit improved PK / PD characteristics.