Downstream processing in the pharmaceutical industry (Part I): recovery and purification

Biopharmaceutical downstream processing refers to the recovery and purification of a molecule of interest from the host cells (for instance engineered E.coli). Typically, this is defined as the unit operations following the completion of cell growth in a bioreactor and subsequent harvesting.

The purpose of the downstream processing is to isolate, purify and concentrate the molecule of interest from a complicated bulk matrix. Moreover, it can also involve packaging, distribution, and quality control strategies to optimise the process and scale up.

In this video we will discuss some processes that are used in recovery and purification. Follow up videos will focus on practical examples and go more into details on how to concentrate, package the products, and how to perform quality control.

00:00 Intro
00:42 Downstream vs upstream
02:11 The basics of recovery
03:28 Cell disruption methods
04:45 Purification
06:11 Chromatography
07:50 Pressure swing adsorption
11:12 Role of sensors in the process
13:45 What's the next step?