Mathias Schaffrath studied biotechnology and got his PhD at the University of Hamburg about enantioselective separations of complex natural products. He started his career in R&D of Intervet (today MSD) and was engaged in the isolation and purification of proteins. Then he moved to Sanofi/Aventis and started the construction and operation of a high throughput purification unit for small molecules /chemical libraries and single compounds. Later he was responsible for chiral separations and implemented the SFC technology in the research laboratories. A few years ago, he established the purification of peptides in research.