Blends of natural polysaccharide sodium alginate (5%) with gelatin (3%) cross-linked with glutaraldehyde provide beads with excellent compressive strength (8 x 10(4) Pa) and regular structure on treatment with calcium chloride. Lipases from porcine pancreas, Pseudomonas cepacia, and Candida rugosa were immobilized in such a blend with excellent efficiency. The immobilized enzymes were stable and were reused several times without significant loss of enzyme activity both in aqueous and reverse micellar media. The beads were functionalized with succinic anhydride to obtain beads with extra carboxylic acid groups. These functionalized beads were then successfully used for 7.4-fold purification of crude porcine pancreatic lipase in a simple operation of protein binding at pH 5 and release at pH 8.5.