When
interferon gamma (IFNG) is produced in
mammalian cell lines a heterogenous
population of IFNG polypeptides is obtained due to C-terminal
processing of the IFNG polypeptide. Clearly, this constitutes a severe problem in that valuable polypeptide material is lost and, further, it is necessary to carry out time-consuming and cumbersome purification in order to obtain a homogenous
population of active IFNG polypeptides having the desired length. It has now been found that an IFNG fragment containing 132
amino acid residues (truncated at the
nucleotide level by introducing a stop-codon after the codon encoding
amino acid residue no. 132) does not undergo C-terminal truncation or, at least, is not significantly C-terminally truncated. Furthermore, as the IFNG fragment containing 132
amino acid residues is active, this opens up the possibility of producing a homogenous active IFNG polypeptide in eukaryotic host cells, such as CHO cells. More particularly, the present invention relates to an IFNG polypeptide variant exhibiting IFNG activity and having the amino acid sequence shown in SEQ ID NO:12. In a highly preferred embodiment of the invention, the variant comprises at least one further modification, such as 1-10 further modifications, relative to the amino acid sequence shown in SEQ ID NO:12. A particular preferred further modification is E38N+S40T.