An important task for bioengineers is to design and execute efficient and sustainable downstream processes to achieve a pure bioproduct. The desired purity and the biophysical characteristics of the product will have large effects on the design of the process. The course aims to give an understanding of the fundamentals of recovery/purification operations for biopharmaceutical production and how these operations are developed for use at production scale. Methods that are relevant for the down-stream process (DSP) will be described and discussed: different means for characterization of biological mixtures, methods used for separation of solid and soluble phases, technologies used to separate dissolved molecules from each other as well as methods utilized to concentrate the product. How the biophysical properties of the target molecule as well as the contaminating molecules can be exploited in the design of an effective DSP will be presented. The theoretical backgrounds of the methods will be described as well as their practical use, advantages and drawbacks. How demands on purity and yield of bio-products affect the design of the (DSP) will be reviewed. Furthermore, the different possible choices of unit operations for downstream purification methods and how the used upstream methods will affect those, will be discussed.
Examples of methods that will be discussed are: filtration, sedimentation, precipitation, centrifugation, extraction, crystallization and chromatography.