Tuning candida rugosa lipasi acylation of polyfunctional templates in SCCO2

Among the enzymes being more largely applied in industrial transformations, lipases find interesting applications in regioselective acylation of polyfunctional compounds. These compounds represent a very interesting class of molecules to be employed as new glucidic drugs and the chemical selective modification of them usually requires several protecting and deprotecting steps, since they have multiple hydroxyl groups of comparable chemical reactivity. Our work was focused on the study of transesterification reactions catalysed by wild type and recombinant microbial lipases by using monoprotected glycosides, as substrates, in organic solvents and in supercritical fluids. It was observed that the reactions in supercritical fluids took place more rapidly and more selectively than in conventional organic solvents.