Future perspectives in enzyme immobilization

Enzyme immobilization has been extensively reviewed in the literature, so the focus in this chapter is on novel promising strategies, highlighting opportunities and challenges. New opportunities for enzyme immobilization arise regarding the development of novel strategies and new support materials, and multienzymatic and bioelectrochemical processes. This is reinforced by the application of protein engineering strategies and their integration with immobilization. Despite the impressive advances experienced in biocatalysis, important challenges remain to be tackled. The development of general guidelines for enzyme immobilization, the scaling up of immobilized enzyme reactor design and operation, and the reduction in enzyme production cost by process optimization are the aspects whose research is underway that will certainly produce a significant output to the use of immobilized enzymes in relevant industrial processes.