A simple procedure for obtaining large amounts of HIV antigens for serodiagnostic purposes

The established method of purifying human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) involves centrifuging the lysates of infected cells onto a sucrose gradient. This article reports an alternative methodology for purifying large amounts of HIV antigens that avoids the need for expensive equipment such as an ultracentrifuge and requires no purification gradient. These semipurified antigens have been used to perform a "homemade" confirmatory Western blot assay that produced reactivity comparable to that obtained with a commercial Western blot assay. Although the "homemade" procedure did not detect one important viral protein (env gp160), this purification method seems to offer a suitable and economical means of obtaining antigens to confirm the presence of antibodies to HIV.