Continuous downstream bioprocessing for intensified manufacture of biopharmaceuticals and antibodies

Continuous production delivers higher productivity and better quality than traditional batch-wise approaches. It intensifies production lowering capital cost and enables better control. Despite obvious advantages, continuous processing has not yet guided biomanufacturing to 21st Century Advanced Manufacturing status. Production relies primarily on batch-wise methods that have served the industry through its infancy. While great improvements have been achieved on the upstream side, downstream processing lacks development in continuous processing and is now the handbrake on modernisation. Nevertheless, there are hopeful advances. Research on continuous chromatographic purification for antibodies is maturing, and work has commenced on other unit operations and on process system integration. This exciting field of process intensification research is at a turning point, though considerably more research is needed. This review aims to summarize the latest developments and capabilities of continuous downstream processing applied in biopharmaceutical research and gives an overview of recent developments.Lukas Gerstweiler, Jingxiu Bi, Anton P.J. Middelber