A scale-down cross-flow filtration technology for biopharmaceutical high throughput process development

Proteins are indispensable molecular machines present in all kingdoms of life, with exquisite diversity in structure and function arising from a small and simple set of building components called amino acids. Their participation in almost all biological reactions highlights their great importance to life itself and the pharmaceutical industry has also benefitted from their therapeutic worth. This chapter introduces the basic aspects for proteins, first discussing their biosynthesis from primary to quaternary structure, and then proceeding to discuss how they are able to carry out their function which is heavily dependent on their structure. We also discuss through illustration their involvement in industry given their role as therapeutics and as molecular targets for therapeutic development.