Design and development of multi-walled carbon nanotube-liposome drug delivery platforms

Publication date: 7 August 2017 Source:International Journal of Pharmaceutics, Volume 528, Issues 1–2 Author(s): Natassa Pippa, Demetrios D. Chronopoulos, Dimitris Stellas, Rodrigo Fernández-Pacheco, Raul Arenal, Costas Demetzos, Nikos Tagmatarchis The aim of this study is to design and develop delivery platforms made of liposomes and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). We used different lipids with different main transition temperature (Tm) and differently functionalized MWCNTs with organic addends possessing either positive or negative charge. The phospholipids used for the formulations were 1,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DPPC) (Tm=41°C) and L-α-phosphatidylcholine, hydrogenated Soy (HSPC) (Tm=53°C). By Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), we studied the interaction between the DPPC and HSPC bilayers and MWCNTs. Liposome-MWCNTs delivery platforms prepared according to the protocol used in the literature. We used dynamic and electrophoretic light scattering in order to investigate the physicochemical characteristics of these mixed nanocarriers. The presence of MWCNTs causes alterations of the size of the conventional HSPC and DPPC liposomes. The ζ-potential values of mixed nanocarriers are near zero. This observation indicates the effective incorporation of MWCNTs into the lipid bilayer of liposomes. Fluorescence spectroscopy has been utilized to exact some qualitative information on the internal nanostructure and nanoenvironment of the ...
Source: International Journal of Pharmaceutics - Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research