Magnetic liposomes

In Drug Delivery

Figure 1: Liposome for drug delivery

Introduction

Drug delivery is the process of administering therapeutics effectively and is thus very important to human health.  There are many techniques involved in delivering drugs, including delivery by oral intake, injection, topical, inhalation, and transmucosal, just to name a few.  Of the many methods, drug delivering liposomes is relatively new and important in targeted drug delivery, especially in applications involving the treatment of cancerous tumors.

Liposomes are spherical vesicles made up of a phospholipid bilayer , where the outside of the membrane is comprised of hydrophilic heads, while the inner portion of the membrane is made of hydrophobic tails (Figure 1).  The membrane closes to create a capsule with an inner aqueous compartment which can house material and carry that material throughout the body.  The liposome can merge with other bilayers such as the cell membrane, thus delivering the contents of the liposome to the cell.

Even more novel, co-localizing drugs with magnetic nanoparticles may help in guiding the liposomes and thus the drugs to a specific target.

Within the contents of this site, you will learn more about targeted drug delivery using liposomes and magnetic nanoparticles.

BME 240 UC Irvine

Bhupinder Shergill

 

E-mail: bshergil@uci.edu