Welcoming Remarks

Continuous bioprocessing is rapidly gaining momentum in therapeutic bioprocessing sectors, providing potential advantages such as smaller facility footprints, lower investment costs, flexibility, and process economy. Progress in the transition from traditional batch production to continuous bioprocessing hinge upon technological advances, especially ultrafiltration (UF) membranes. The conventional ultrafiltration membranes are produced by non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS) method. The NIPS membranes are anisotropic with wide pore size distribution and low surface porosity. The challenges with current UF membrane separation are fouling and wide pore size distribution of membranes, which limit the performance and selectivity for species with slightly different sizes. An example application is separation of valuable monoclonal antibody (mAb) from harmful parvovirus particles, in which the size difference is on the order of 5 nm. Our aim is to develop membranes with controlled surface charge/energy and narrow pore size distribution from templating approach. In this approach, we use the thermodynamically driven self-assembly of amphiphiles to produce templates with periodic nanostructures. Upon polymerization of the template, nanoporous polymers will be obtained, which have narrow pore size distribution and controlled surface chemistry