Surface plasmon resonance imaging as a screening platform in biopharmaceutical development

Development of biopharmaceutical products requires extensive research on a multitude of steps that are involved in the delivery of a final product. In this chapter, a general introduction on biopharmaceuticals is provided, including two examples of biopharmaceutical products (erythropoietin and monoclonal antibodies) that have been studied throughout this research. The following paragraphs will highlight a typical production process for biopharmaceuticals consisting of both upstream and downstream processing. In addition, product characterization using a variety of analytical tools is required to determine the product quality, based on several critical quality attributes of biopharmaceuticals that need to be assessed. An overview of the most widely applied analytical tools, including the product characteristics that can be determined, is provided. This is followed by a more detailed description of the principles of Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) and SPR imaging (SPRi), which was the main analytical technology that has been applied in this research. The use and potential applications of SPRi during various steps in biopharmaceutical development have been explored and will be further discussed throughout this work.