together with 27th DECHEMA Annual Convention of Biotechnologists 
8-9 September 2009
together with 27th DECHEMA Annual Convention of Biotechnologists
Much of today's downstream processing is dominated by chemical and biochemical engineers employing a rudimentary 'toolbox' many decades old, which has since been 'optimized' in incremental fashion to work with various different biotech applications as and when they appear. Some would argue that this situation is set to change.
The past few years have seen tremendous progress in fields of micro-fluidics, analytical tools for -omics research, high-throughput screening, mathematical modeling and bioinformatics. The new experimental techniques emerging from these endeavors afford the collection of huge amounts of analytical and process data that cannot be evaluated by traditional methods, and thus not surprisingly we are seeing parallel symbiotic growth in statistical and mathematical techniques, and pipe dreams such as data bank driven process development in silico are slowly becoming a reality. The potential impact of these new tools on downstream processing is underlined by the FDA's 'Quality by Design' initiative, which clearly identifies their roles at the very heart of modern process development.
Against all of the above the purpose of this international workshop is to provide a comprehensive overview of the very latest technologies and research directions being pursued in modern bioprocess development.
Jürgen Hubbuch & Matthias Franzreb