Microfluidic production, stability and loading of synthetic giant unilamellar vesicles

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Access rights

openAccess

URL

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä

Date

2024-06-18

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Language

en

Pages

8

Series

Scientific Reports, Volume 14, issue 1

Abstract

In advanced drug delivery, versatile liposomal formulations are commonly employed for safer and more accurate therapies. Here we report a method that allows a straightforward production of synthetic monodisperse (~ 100 μm) giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) using a microfluidic system. The stability analysis based on the microscopy imaging showed that at ambient conditions the produced GUVs had a half-life of 61 ± 2 h. However, it was observed that ~ 90% of the calcein dye that was loaded into GUVs was transported into a surrounding medium in 24 h, thus indicating that the GUVs may release these small dye molecules without distinguishable membrane disruption. We further demonstrated the feasibility of our method by loading GUVs with larger and very different cargo objects; small soluble fluorescent proteins and larger magnetic microparticles in a suspension. Compared to previously reported microfluidics-based production techniques, the obtained results indicate that our simplified method could be equally harnessed in creating GUVs with less cost, effort and time, which could further benefit studying closed membrane systems.

Description

Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2024.

Keywords

Other note

Citation

Ernits, M, Reinsalu, O, Yandrapalli, N, Kopanchuk, S, Moradpur-Tari, E, Sanka, I, Scheler, O, Rinken, A, Kurg, R, Kyritsakis, A, Linko, V & Zadin, V 2024, ' Microfluidic production, stability and loading of synthetic giant unilamellar vesicles ', Scientific Reports, vol. 14, no. 1, 14071 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-64613-4