Vaccine entrapment in liposomes

Gregory Gregoriadis, Brenda McCormack, Mia Obrenovic, Roghieh Saffie, Brahim Zadi, Yvonne Perrie

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The use of liposomes as carriers of peptide, protein, and DNA vaccines requires simple, easy-to-scale-up technology capable of high-yield vaccine entrapment. Work from this laboratory has led to the development of techniques that can generate liposomes of various sizes, containing soluble antigens such as proteins and particulate antigens (e.g., killed or attenuated bacteria or viruses), as well as antigen-encoding DNA vaccines. Entrapment of vaccines is carried out by the dehydration-rehydration procedure which entails freeze-drying of a mixture of "empty" small unilamellar vesicles and free vaccines. On rehydration, the large multilamellar vesicles formed incorporate up to 90% or more of the vaccine used. When such liposomes are microfluidized in the presence of nonentrapped material, their size is reduced to about 100 nm in diameter, with much of the originally entrapped vaccine still associated with the vesicles. A similar technique applied for the entrapment of particulate antigens (e.g., Bacillus subtilis spores) consists of freeze-drying giant vesicles (4-5 microm in diameter) in the presence of spores. On rehydration and sucrose gradient fractionation of the suspension, up to 30% or more of the spores used are associated with generated giant liposomes of similar mean size.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)156-162
Number of pages7
JournalMethods
Volume19
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 1999

Keywords

  • bacteria
  • drug carriers
  • freeze drying
  • humans
  • liposomes
  • microscopy
  • particle size
  • peptides
  • proteins
  • vaccines
  • DNA
  • viruses

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