Patent ID: 7232893

Claim:
A method of manufacturing a stellate cell death factor comrising the steps of (a) producing conditioned media from an immortalized hepatocyte, wherein conditioned media is culture medium used to maintain transfected primary human hepatocytes (“TPH”) stably transfected with hepatitis C virus core gene or primary human hepatocytes immortalized by Simian Virus 40 T antigen (“THLE”) stably transfected with hepatitis C virus core gene, (b) applying the conditioned media to at least one column, and (c) collecting fractions containing a stellate cell death factor wherein the stellate cell death factor (i) is capable of activating caspase 7 in a liver stellate cell, (ii) is associated with an approxmately 80 kD protein as determination by sodium dodecyl sulfate electrophoresis, (iii) is inactivated at 56 degrees C., and (iv) is capable of binding to albumin.