Preparation of liposomes:

Methods of liposome Preparation

Passive loading: involves loading of the entrapped agents before or during the manufacturing process

Active or remote loading: certain types of compounds with ionisable groups and those with both lipid and water solubility, can be introduced into liposomes after the formation of the intect vesicles

Methods of liposome preparation:

Method of liposome preparation

Passive loading techniques

Active loading techniques

Mechanical dispersion methods

Solvent dispersion methods

Detergent removal methods

Lipid film hydration by hand shaking non hand shaking or freeze drying Micro emulsification Sonication French pressure cell Membrane extrusion Dried reconstituted vesicles Freeze thawed liposomes

Ethanol injection Ether injection Double emulsion vesicles Reverse phase evaporation vesicles Stable plurilamellar vesicles

Detergent (cholate, alkylglycoside, trito n-100)removal from mixed Micelles by Dialysis Column chromatography Dilution Reconstituted sandal virus Enveloped vesicles

General method of liposome preparation: All the methods of preparing liposomes involve 3-4 basic steps:

Drying down lipids from organic solvent

Dispersion of lipid in aqueous media

Purification of resultant liposomes

Analysis of final product

Cholesterol

Lecithin

Charge

Dissolve

In organic

Solvent

Solution in organic solvent

Drying

Thin film

Dispersion /Hydration

Liposome suspension

CHARACTERIZATION OF LIPOSOMES: The behaviour of liposomes in both physical and biological systems in governed by the factors such as: Physical size Membrane permeability Percent entrapped solutes Chemical composition Quantity and purity of the starting material Therefore, the liposomes are characterized for physical attributes: Shape size and its distribution Percentage drug capture Entrapped volume Lamellarity Percentage drug release Chemical compositions: Estimation of phospholipids Phospholipid oxidation Analysis of cholesterol Drug release: The mechanism of drug release from the liposomes can be assessed by the use of a well calibrated in vitro diffusion cell. The liposome based formulations can be assisted by employing in vitro assays to predict pharmacokinetics and bioavailability of the drug before employing costly and time consuming in vivo studies. The dilution-induced drug release in buffer and plasma was employed as predictor for pharmacokinetic performance of liposomal formulations and another assay which determined intracellular drug release induced by liposome degradation in the presence of mouse-liver lysosome lysate was used to assess the bioavailability of the drug.