The treatment of diseases such as cancer, autoimmune diseases and infectious diseases is nowadays often carried out with biopharmaceuticals that are produced using living organisms. Alongside enzymes, hormones and blood clotting factors, monoclonal antibodies are among the most important biopharmaceuticals. In 2020 alone, biopharmaceuticals generated global sales of USD 270 billion. This corresponds to 30% of the global pharmaceutical market (Evaluate Pharma(R), 2021). The popularity of the biopharmaceutical industry is based on the production of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), which are mostly produced using Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells.

The production of mAbs alone accounts for 90% of animal cell cultivation capacity (Haigh et al., 2020), which are traditionally produced in fed-batch mode. However, as the production of mAbs is very expensive, there is a recognisable trend towards process intensification methods. The aim is, for example, to increase the product titre or save costs and time (Müller et al., 2021; Yang et al., 2019). As part of a research project, a sinlge-use mini plate separator is to be used for cell culture-based production processes.