Generation of immunoliposomes using microfluidic devices

Abstract

Immunoliposomes, or antibody-conjugated liposomes, hold promise as an effective way to target drugs to specific tissues. Currently, we can find in the market immunoliposomes such as Doxil, an anti-cancer drug; Amphotec, an anti-fungal drug; and Allovectin-7, used for gene therapy. However the synthesis methods used areinefficient. The formation of liposomes is a multi-step process that requires sonication and filtering. In addition, its encapsulation efficiency is low, what leads to the waste, in many cases, of expensive drugs. We use microfluidic technology to solve these obstacles to efficient liposomal synthesis. We generated double emulsion drops (a drop inside another drop) where the inner liquid is the drug we want to encapsulate, the middle phase is a solution of lipids and the outer is an aqueous solution where our liposome will be dispersedand the conjugation with the anti-bodies will happen. The advantage of this method is its high encapsulating efficiency and the control of the size of the liposome. This techniquecouldpotentiallybe used to drastically reduce side effects and increase tissue-specific drug targeting for a wide variety of diseases.