ABSTRACT
The purification of biomolecules is an important challenge in the biopharmaceutical industry. In the recent past, liquid chromatography has emerged as a major technique not only in the laboratory but also at the manufacturing plant. The success of liquid chromatography lies in its ability to achieve high purification factors from complex mixtures while preserving the integrity of labile biomolecules. In addition, concomitant product separation and concentration are obtained under appropriate conditions. The resolving power of liquid chromatography is explained, on one hand, by the relatively vast choice of thermodynamic interactions that can be exploited to segregate the target component from its contaminants; and on the other hand, by the high efficiency of modern packing media. Moreover, the structure and activity of a biomolecule are preserved because of the mild operating conditions of biochromatography. Although it is used at the manufacturing scale, liquid chromatography still suffers from a low productivity compared to other biochemical processes. Further, some obstacles are still encountered with the scaling-up and optimization of liquid chromatography (Yamamoto, 1995). The need for high quality and cost effective bioprocesses has created incentives to establish rational process design and scale-up strategies.
