Procedimiento sencillo para obtener grandes cantidades de antigenos del VIH para serodiagnostico / A simple procedure for obtaining large amount of HIV antigens for serodiagnostic purposes

RESUMO

The established method of purifying human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) involves centrifuging the lysates of infected cells onto a sucrose gradient. We have developed 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 use to perform a "homemade" confirmatory Western blot assay that produced results comparable to those obtained with a commercial (Du Pont) Western blot assay. Although the "homemade" procedure did not detect one important viral protein (env gp 160), this purification method seems to offer a suitable and economical way of obtaining antigens to confirm the presence of HIV antibodies