Preparative HPLC is possible, but it is seldom used even in research, as it it slow and you can only push through a certain number of milligrams a day in such a machine.
Actually it is quite commonly used for the purification of large bioactive proteins. Even at production scales, protiens like IGG has a HPLC purification step. I've seen pics of 0.5 meter diameter HPLC columns.
Check this out
http://www.lcgceurope.com/lcgceurope/data/articlestandard/lcgceurope/202002/19103/article.pdf (http://www.lcgceurope.com/lcgceurope/data/articlestandard/lcgceurope/202002/19103/article.pdf)
They even have continuously running HPLC systems. It involves a series of coulmns and valves that can bee switched such that the separation is continuous. I'm not sure if there are any actually in a pharmaceutical production process. Probably not because of the validation and cleanliness issues of such a system. Plus batch processing is pretty ingrained in the pharmaceutical field.