Lipases are one of the most used enzymes in the pharmaceutical industry due to their efficiency in organic syntheses, mainly in the production of enantiopure drugs. From an industrial viewpoint, the selection of an efficient expression system and host for recombinant lipase production is highly important. The most used hosts are Escherichia coli and Komagataella phaffii (previously known as Pichia pastoris) and less often reported Bacillus and Aspergillus strains. The use of efficient expression systems to overproduce homologous or heterologous lipases often require the use of strong promoters and the co-expression of chaperones. Protein engineering techniques, including rational design and directed evolution, are the most reported strategies for improving lipase characteristics. Additionally, lipases can be immobilized in different supports that enable improved properties and enzyme reuse. Here, we review approaches for strain and protein engineering, immobilization and the application of lipases in the pharmaceutical industry.

The aim of the present study was to bring additional evidence regarding a biopredictive dissolution medium containing 1% sodium lauryl sulphate (SLS) to predict the in vivo behavior of carbamazepine (CBZ) products. Twelve healthy volunteers took one immediate release (IR) dose of either test and reference formulations in a bioequivalence study (BE). Dissolution profiles were carried-out using the medium. Level A in vitro–in vivo correlations (IVIVC) were established using both one-step and two-step approaches as well as exploring the time-scaling approach to account for the differences in dissolution rate in vitro versus in vivo. A detailed step by step calculation was provided to clearly illustrate all the procedures. The results show additional evidence that the medium containing 1% SLS can be classified as a universal biopredictive dissolution tool, and that both of the approaches used to develop the IVIVC (one and two-steps) provide good in vivo predictability. Therefore, this biopredictive medium could be a highly relevant tool in Latin-American countries to ensure and check the quality of their CBZ marketed products for which BE studies were not requested by their regulatory health authorities.