Microfluidic-controlled manufacture of liposomes for the solubilisation of a poorly water soluble drug

Elisabeth Kastner, Varun Verma, Deborah Lowry, Yvonne Perrie*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Besides their well-described use as delivery systems for water-soluble drugs, liposomes have the ability to act as a solubilizing agent for drugs with low aqueous solubility. However, a key limitation in exploiting liposome technology is the availability of scalable, low-cost production methods for the preparation of liposomes. Here we describe a new method, using microfluidics, to prepare liposomal solubilising systems which can incorporate low solubility drugs (in this case propofol). The setup, based on a chaotic advection micromixer, showed high drug loading (41 mol%) of propofol as well as the ability to manufacture vesicles with at prescribed sizes (between 50 and 450 nm) in a high-throughput setting. Our results demonstrate the ability of merging liposome manufacturing and drug encapsulation in a single process step, leading to an overall reduced process time. These studies emphasise the flexibility and ease of applying lab-on-a-chip microfluidics for the solubilisation of poorly water-soluble drugs.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)122-130
Number of pages9
JournalInternational Journal of Pharmaceutics
Volume485
Issue number1-2
Early online date25 Feb 2015
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 May 2015

Bibliographical note

NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in International journal of pharmaceutics. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Kastner, E, Verma, V, Lowry, D & Perrie, Y, 'Microfluidic-controlled manufacture of liposomes for the solubilisation of a poorly water soluble drug' International journal of pharmaceutics, vol 485, no. 1-2 (2015) DOI Kastner, E., Verma, V., Lowry, D., & Perrie, Y. (2015). Microfluidic-controlled manufacture of liposomes for the solubilisation of a poorly water soluble drug. International journal of pharmaceutics, 485(1-2), 122-130.

Partial funding: EPSRC

Keywords

  • bilayer loading
  • high throughput
  • liposomes
  • microfluidics
  • poorly soluble drugs

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