ABSTRACT
Biopharmaceutical manufacture is conventionally divided into upstream and downstream
phases, the former dealing with the growth of biological raw material and the latter with
the extraction and purification of the desired product. Downstream processing can thus be
defined as the series operations that takes the output from upstream processing (e.g.,
fermentation broth, plant tissue, animal tissue, milk, serum) and yields a stable, pure
product (Kalyanpur, 2000). Many different product types can be considered under the
umbrella of biopharmaceuticals, ranging from small molecules (secondary metabolites,
amino acids etc) to proteins, nucleic acids, viral particles and even whole cells. This
chapter focuses on the production of biopharmaceutical proteins (Fig. 1).
