Production and Characterization of Liposomes for Potential Biomedical Applications
Abstract
For targeted drug delivery, one of the primary drawbacks lies with the inability to design a delivery system that can be loaded with a variety of drugs and biomolecules. Motivated by this challenge, we will present data showing liposomes loaded via the novel method of lysenin pores.
Liposomes were loaded with both fluorescent calcein (a drug simulator) and DNA. This new method allows one to control the size of the liposomes and the rate at which biomolecules are loaded.
The liposomes formed were found to be stable with respect to temperature, salinity, and time. Once lysenin pores were added to the liposomes, we show that calcein (a dug simulator) can be loaded, after which the pores can be closed. Furthermore, we show that one can controllably load dsDNA with lengths of 50 bp, 75 bp, and 100 bp by closing the pores with multivalent ions and charged polymers. We also present a new way to visualize liposomes by quenching calcein using multivalent ions. A model was developed to describe the loading of liposomes using first-order kinetics and was found to give excellent agreement with experimental data. The activation energy, steric hindrance, and loading time into liposomes through lysenin pores was found to increase as dsDNA length increased.
