Novel liposome formulation from algae membranes as carriers for bioactive compounds

Abstract

Liposomes are lipid-based systems which have the ability to incorporate various chemical substances and thus can be used for drug delivery purposes. Liposomes are composed of phospholipids, flexible in composition, and have shown great potential to improve delivery and targeting of bioactive substances which otherwise have poor bioavailability in the body. Conventional liposomes composed of various types of phospholipids have already been analyzed as potential drug carriers and show promising results. There also have been investigations on the composition of naturally found organisms, mainly different kinds of bacteria, and their potential to be used in pharmaceutical applications. Various types of lipids are found in the membranes of these natural organisms. This fact provides a basis for possible employment of these in liposome preparation. Thus the goal of this project was to evaluate the possibility of using liposomes derived from algae membranes, namely Gram-negative purple non-sulfurbacteria and cyanobacteria, to act as potential drug carriers for bioactive substances. One of the model substances was curcumin, a natural polyphenol derived from rhizomes of dietary spice turmeric. Curcumin exhibits a range of biological activities and pharmacological actions; however, these are hard to take advantage of, because of its low oral bioavailability. In this study, the physico-chemical properties of liposome-curcumin complex was mainly determined by UV/VIS Spectrometry and Dynamic Light Scattering techniques. Through numerious studies liposomes have already shown the ability to improve poor solubility and consequently increase the bioavailability of lipophilic drugs. Additionally, there is a great interest of investigating the ability of liposomes to overcome other therapy-related problems. One of currently existing drawback issues in the therapeutical treatment is the antimicrobial resistance. It has become a major problem, since more and more bacteria are becoming resistant to antimicrobial agents used today, leaving us with no means of treating existing infections.( ) One of the most promising strategies for enhancing drug delivery and combating various resistance mechanisms is administration of microbial agents by nano delivery systems, including liposomes. Therefore, it was of our interest to characterize liposomal antibiotics from physico-chemical point of view, and investigate their antibacterial activity on living bacterial cultures compared to free antibiotics and antibiotics loaded on conventional liposomes.