Biopharmaceuticals -- discovery, development and manufacturing.

This Special issue, Biopharmaceuticals - discovery, development and manufacturing is edited by Alois Jungbauer and Klaus Graumann and includes articles on various aspects of the development of biopharmaceuticals. Topics covered include the importance of antigen presentation in creating and selecting binding molecules, G-protein-coupled receptors as drug targets, and continuous downstream processing.

Quality-by-design for biotechnology-related pharmaceuticals.

The following article is a report from a workshop on Quality-by-Design (QbD) held at the 7th European Symposium on Biochemical Engineering Science (7 September 2008, Faro, Portugal).The aim of the workshop was to provide an update on the present status of using QbD in biotechnology-related applications in the pharmaceutical industry. The report summarizes the essential parts of the presentations and covers the industrial, academic, and regulatory aspects of QbD.

Manufacturing of recombinant therapeutic proteins in microbial systems.

Recombinant therapeutic proteins have gained enormous importance for clinical applications. The first recombinant products have been produced in E. coli more than 20 years ago.