Challenges in dairy whey protein purification

Abstract

Cheese whey, a by-product generated during the manufacture of cheese, with an annual world production of almost 200 million tons, is currently considered a waste for many cheese-making companies. However, many valuable and marketable proteins originally contained in the milk remain in the whey and their isolation from this source would increase the added value of whey. Due to their complex nature, the isolation of cheese whey proteins represents an enormous challenge, which increases when considering an industrial scale. Moreover, when high volumes of cheese whey -or even milk- need to be processed, most of the protein purification models usually used in the biopharma/biotechnology industries fail to be applied. This chapter will discuss some novel and scalable approaches for the processing of cheese whey for protein production, with potential application at industrial scale.