Phase Transitions in Sugars and Protein Systems: Study of Stability of Lysozyme in Amorphous Sugar Matrices

摘要

The degree of thermal stability conferred to the enzyme by sugar glasses depends on concentration of the excipient, type of excipient, and drying process, among other parameters. The selection of an efficient preservation agent for freeze-dried biomolecules can be a time-consuming task if the set of experimental parameters considered in order to determine its optimal performance is incomplete. Therefore, it is relevant for development of the appropriate preservation agent to validate experimental test procedures of thermal stability of biomolecules directly in concentrated solution, which allows a much faster and useful tool to make predictions on efficiency of thermal stability, since these results can be extrapolated to the performance of the preservation agents in dried systems. The results of this work, summarized in Fig. 8, show how by using information from concentrated aqueous solutions we have been able to improve thermal stability of the same enzyme when compared with other results from the literature.