Downstream processing is playing an increasingly important role in the biochemical industry, especially since the advent of recombinant DNA technology. The use of recombinant DNA technology not only enables improvements in the production efficiency of therapeutic and industrial proteins, but it also permits the modification and improvement of protein structure and thus function.However, the commercial application of such technology was initially accompanied by concerns over product safety.Quality criteria have been made especially stringent for products derived from genetically-modified microorganisms. The establishment of strict quality guidelines was the result of early concern about the oncogenic potential related to products contaminated by DNA sequences of the host mammalian cells (1). The quest for high quality has created a growing need for high-resolution techniques at the process scale as well as for novel strategies for the isolation and purification of bioproducts. Since the typical environment for producing biologicals is a complex one and quality criteria need to be strict, primary recovery techniques are typically implemented in a purification scheme prior to (or in conjunction with) high-resolution techniques. The most sophisticated and useful schemes take advantage of both the different physical and chemical properties of the components in complex mixtures and of the interactive nature of the downstream processing techniques (see Figure 1).