(203b) Inexpensive and Rapid Synthesis Unilammelar Liposomal Drugs for Targeted Delivery

Liposomes are rapidly emerging as one of the most advantageous nano-scale drug delivery systems. Their ability to enhance bioavailability through increased solubilities, lengthened clearance rates, and improved targeting capabilities has been well documented. However, current liposome synthesis approaches involve complex and tedious techniques limiting their investigation to specialized facilities. This represents a clear separation between basic liposomal pharmaceutical research, and their translation into therapeutic and theranostic platforms. Here we show a gentle method for reliably synthesizing, purifying, and concentrating unilamellar liposomes using common benchtop equipment. We use the ethanol injection method to encapsulate fluorescent molecules that vary in size (400-20k Da) within liposomes with a mean diameter of less than 150 nm. Using a standard benchtop centrifuge and Amicon Ultra filteration centrifuge tubes, we have characterized a simplified approach to gently and efficiently remove any unencapsulated drug while limiting aggregation or loss of sample, problems commonly encountered in ultracentrifugation and chromatographic approaches. We also demonstrate no loss in bioactivity following the purification process by incubating metastatic breast cancer cells with liposomes containing doxorubicin and monitoring cell viability over several days. It is our hope that with this efficient and accessible approach, the discovery of novel liposomal formulations may be better investigated and more widely implemented in clinical settings.