Ultradeformable tebenquisomes (UT): new topical adjuvants.

L HIGA, MJ MORILLA, EL ROMERO

Conferencia; First Annual Conference of the American Society for Nanomedicine; 2009

UT are 200 nm diameter vesicles composed by a matrix of soy PC, sodium cholate and total polar lipid (TPL) extracted from the non alkaliphilic halophilic archaea   Halorubrum tebenquichense, found in the Argentinean Patagonia, at 3:3:1 w/w/w. Negative ion ESI-MS of TPL identified major signals for archaeal phosphatidylglycerol (PG), phosphatidylglycerophosphate methyl ester (PGP-Me) and sulfated diglycosyl diphytanylglycerol diether S-DGD as well as a small signal for archaeal cardiolipin (BPG). UT could be dehydrated by the savant method while their ultradeformability remained unchanged upon fully rehydration, even in the absence of sugars as lyoprotectans. Remarkably, in spite of being the UT completely lacking of lipopolysaccharides, when loaded with the model protein ovoalbumin (OVA) at 15 mg OVA/mg lipid and upon topical application in a regimen of three doses of 20 mg OVA/cm2 on the shaved skin of Balb/c mice, the UT were found to induce systemic IgG responses three folds higher than OVA- loaded conventional ultradeformable liposomes after 6 weeks.