Cloning and expression of recombinant macrophage-colony stimulating factor - A progressive strategy for economical production

Macrophage-colony stimulating factor (M-CSF) has been reported to be required for the proliferation and differentiation of macrophages from hematopoietic progenitor cells. Recently, recombinant M-CSF (rM-CSF) became widely used as a biological research reagent in bone marrow stimulations, vaccine development, gene therapy approaches, and stem cell mobilization. rM-CSF is a glycoprotein that activates and enhances the differentiation and survival of macrophages, which play a key role in the osteoclastogenetic response. Here, we describe the construction of the gene encoding rM-CSF, its cloning, and expression in Escherichia coli , as well as the purification of rM-CSF protein, and its activity in a biological assay in mouse bone marrow cells. Our results show that the combination of experimental strategies employed to obtain recombinant rM-CSF can yield a biologically active protein, and may be useful when scaling-up production of other biologically similar proteins.