Disclosed is an improved process for obtaining purified, monomeric, intact, correctly-folded insulin-like growth factor-I (also known as somatomedin-C). The improvements, consisting primarily of the addition of an IGF-I unfolding/refolding step and the substitution of a reverse phase chromatography step for a gel filtration chromatography step result in a three-fold increase in final yield. The process includes the following steps, in order: first cation exchange, unfolding/refolding, hydrophobic interaction chromatography, second cation exchange, and reverse phase chromatography.