Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting | Ascona, Switzerland

Liposomes, Exosomes, and Virosomes: From Modeling Complex Membrane Processes to Medical Diagnostics and Drug Delivery

Poster Abstracts

34-POS Board 17 Formation and Characterization of Hybrid Lipid – Biodegradable Block Copolymer Vesicles Sanobar Khan 1 , Paul A. Beales 1 , Kathryn Hill 2 . 1 University of Leeds, Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom, 2 AstraZeneca, Macclesfield, Cheshire, United Kingdom. Vesicular nanoparticles have proven to be a successful formulation strategy to modify drug pharmacokinetics and enhance therapeutic index, with numerous examples in current clinical use. The majority of these successes have been in the form of liposomes, often with a non- fouling polymer-brush coating. Block copolymer vesicles have also attracted interest for drug delivery applications due to their broader range of physicochemical properties. Recently, hybrid vesicles formed from a blend of lipids and block copolymers have shown promise for synergistically combining the natural biocompatibility of liposomes with the enhanced mechanical robustness of polymersomes, further expanding the tuneable parameter space for vesicle engineering. Here we will present an investigation of hybrid vesicles formed from mixtures of the phospholipid POPC with a range of different biodegradable diblock copolymers. This will encompass different vesicle formation protocols, comparison to the unitary liposome and polymersome systems and characterization of vesicle size distributions, hydrophilic encapsulation efficiency, thermal phase transitions, lateral mixing behaviour and temporal stability. The aim of this work is to identify promising hybrid vesicle blends for biomedical applications in drug formulation and delivery.

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