CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Liposomes are used as vehicles for drug delivery, such as in the administration of doxorubicin (DOX) for the treatment of diverse types of cancer. In general, the use of liposomes can have limitations (low stability, drug leakage, etc). One possible strategy to overcome these limitations is to modify the liposomes using polymeric materials. In this study, we used the cationic polymer Eudragit E100 (EU) to modify unilamellar liposomes (LP) in order to evaluate the physicochemical properties of the nanostructures obtained. We used the well-studied liposomal doxorubicin system as a model for this study. First, we evaluated the effect of the EU concentration on LP formation. To do this, we varied the EU concentration between 0.6 and 50 % w/w with respect to total lipids. We observed that at higher concentrations of EU, aggregation occurred, preventing the homogenization of the mixture. At concentrations below 10 %, nanometric structures containing lipids and EU were obtained, with 1.5 % EU being the best concentration for obtaining modified liposomes (EU-LP) with physicochemical parameters comparable to those of LP. Next, we tested the doxorubicin loading efficiency in these EU-LP, obtaining 95 % encapsulated doxorubicin. This result indicates that a stable LP can be formed in the presence of EU. In addition, we tested various preparation methods, including varying solubilization, mixing, and evaporation conditions. We observed that these conditions affected the characteristics of the LP and in EU-LP prepared with 0.6 % EU. However, in EU-LP prepared with 1.5 %, no significant differences were observed between the conditions tested.Given the cationic characteristics of these particles, a more extensive physicochemical characterization of EU-LP is currently underway in order to evaluate the possibility of expanding the utility of the system for nucleic acid delivery.

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