Dissociation of anticomplementary and adjuvant properties of proteins derived from cobra venom.

The ability of preparations of cobra factor (CoF) to convert C3 via the properdin pathway (anticomplementary activity) has been demonstrated to be unrelated to its ascribed ability to convert a tolerogenic signal into an immunogenic stimulus (adjuvant activity). It has been shown that CoF preparations which have become inactive with regard to anticomplementary activity still retain full adjuvant properties. Further, when both activities are present in preparations of CoF, they can be separated by gel filtration chromatography into a fraction with approximate molecular weight 150,000 which contains anticomplementary activity and a fraction with approximate molecular weight 20,000, which contains adjuvant properties.