Applications in bioprocesses and biotechnology

Many of today’s drugs arise from bioprocesses including microbial, yeast and animal cell lines. These include small molecules such as antibiotics and the so-called biopharmaceutical (recombinant) proteins and gene therapeutics. Indeed, currently the biopharmaceutical market is estimated to grow by 20% per year compared with 7 to 8% for the overall drug market. The ability to control a bioprocess is paramount for product yield optimisation and it is imperative that the concentration of the fermentation product, the determinand, is assessed accurately.Whilst the development of such monitoring methods was traditionally driven by economic and ecological needs, the increasing manufacture of biopharmaceuticals has raised concerns over product consistency. For example, the glycosylation status of a protein must be known and protein purity is also highly important. Thus, within the pharmaceutical sector there is an increasing need to embrace PAT and – particularly with the RAMAN SPECTROSCOPY