The immediate objective of the proposed project is to purify ectopic hCG-beta from culture fluids of the DoT and CaSki cervical cancer cell lines, neither of which secretes detectable amounts of intact hCG-alpha. The purification process will utilize affinity columns of anti-hCG linked to Sepharose, concanavalin A linked to Sepharose, gel filtration and, if necessary, ion-exchange chromatography. The purified ectopic beta subunit of hCG will be characterized by gel electrophoresis, molecular sieve chromatography, activity in rat uterine weight bioassay and rat testicular receptor assay before and after combination with ectopic or normal hCG-alpha, and immunologic behavior in homologous radioimmunoassays for hCG and hCG-beta. It is hoped that this project will establish a processing system for the continuing purification of ectopic hCG-beta for future collaborative investigation, and a comparison of ectopic hCG-beta with eutopic hCG-beta. The long-range goal of this research is to develop a process for purifying small quantities of metabolic products from large volumes of tissue culture fluids that are otherwise discarded routinely. Hopefully this project will demonstrate the feasibility of such a goal.