Continuing discoveries in molecular biology and genetics provide the foundation for new and improved processes and products in today's biochemical process industry. The production of new pharmaceutical products like fermentation-based antibiotics, recombinant proteins or monoclonal antibodies, which is made possible by new discoveries in biotechnology, generated sales exceeding 30 billion in 2004 and is projected to reach values of 800 billion in 2010. Moreover, biotechnology has also led to substantial improvements and expansion in the traditional biochemical process industry for production of enzymes, diagnostics, chemicals and foods. As purification steps account for a large part of the operating costs and investments, the optimisation of downstream processing of pharmaceutical products becomes more and more stimulating.
展开▼
