Response surface methodology in biotechnology

Many experiments in biotechnology exploit the principles and methods of response surface methodology (RSM). The Quality by Design initiative in pharmaceutical development will accelerate this trend. In this article we give a broad picture of the important role played by RSM in biotechnology experimentation. We give brief descriptions of a collection of studies using RSM from recent issues of biotechnology journals, present some of the issues in the design and analysis of experiments for cell media, and look in detail at one of the experiments.