CHALLENGES AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVE
ATPS provide simple and powerful media for bioseparation of biotechnological products. Despite the definite advantages of ATPS, the wide commercial adoption of ATPS as a part of downstream processes at pilot scale is still not extensive. The reluctance to embrace ATPS by industries is mainly due to the complexity in understanding the interrelated interactions between ATPS compounds as well as difficulty in predicting the mechanism governing the phase formation and partition of biological materials, making the method development wholly empirical (16,68). Understanding forces governing partitioning of solutes in ATPS would allow a better process predictability and optimization. Extensive research with the aid of modern analytical techniques, statistical tool or reliable mathematical modelling is thus required (10). Recently, a semi-empirical model based on continuum electrostatics was applied to predict the protein partitioning characteristics in different polymer/polymer systems. Besides showing a good predicting ability on proteins partitioning, this model could significantly decrease the number of experiments needed for optimization of protein partitioning in ATPS (26).
