Microfluidized liposomes for cellular uptake imaging: Optimization

Abstract

Liposomes as drug delivery systems exhibit great potential to deliver active molecules to the targeted site depending on their various characteristics. However, these characteristics are dependent on the manufacturing procedures applied to prepare liposomes. Especially difficult is assurance of reproducible production in large volumes. Therefore an efficient up-scalable method for production of liposomes is needed. A microfluidizer has shown to be able to prepare large volumes of liposomes, however there is not an easy set up on this machine that guarantees reproducible formulations. For such a method, screening of liposome characteristics are important, and adding fluorophores to liposomes increases the ability to follow not only their characteristics, but also fate in organisms via imaging. However for fluorescent imaging to be useful and reliable, fluorescently labeled liposomes must exhibit the same behavior as the plain liposome. Here, optimization of microfluidizer parameters for the production of fluorescent liposomes for cell uptake imaging and biological activity testing on cell cultures is carried out.