Could liposomes be the unsung heroes of the pandemic?

Liposomes may be the unsung heroes of the COVID-19 pandemic. Without the protection of these microscopic vesicles, the delicate strands of messenger RNA (mRNA) that lie at the heart of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines ...

Study sheds light on mechanism of liposome accumulation in tumors

Dmitri Simberg, Ph.D., associate professor in the University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy, has released the results of a study of the effectiveness of different types of fluorescent labels used to monitor the accumulation ...

Nanobowls serve up chemotherapy drugs to cancer cells

For decades, scientists have explored the use of liposomes—hollow spheres made of lipid bilayers—to deliver chemotherapy drugs to tumor cells. But drugs can sometimes leak out of liposomes before they reach their destination, ...

Lipid vesicles transmit luminous or electrical signals

Liposomes are small spherical vesicles with walls comprising two layers of lipids and containing an aqueous core. These artificial structures have been developed for drug delivery or as carriers of active substances in cosmetic ...

Nano-droplets are the key to controlling membrane formation

The creation of membranes is of enormous importance in biology, but also in many chemical applications developed by humans. These membranes are shaped spontaneously when soap-like molecules in water join together. Researchers ...

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Liposome

Liposomes are artificially prepared vesicles made of lipid bilayer. Liposomes can be filled with drugs, and used to deliver drugs for cancer and other diseases. Liposomes are composite structures made of phospholipids and may contain small amounts of other molecules. Though liposomes can vary in size from low micrometer range to tens of micrometers, unilamellar liposomes, as pictured here, are typically in the lower size range with various targeting ligands attached to their surface allowing for their surface-attachment and accumulation in pathological areas for treatment of disease. Liposomes can be prepared by disrupting biological membranes, for example by sonication.

Liposomes can be composed of naturally derived phospholipids with mixed lipid chains (like egg phosphatidylethanolamine) or other surfactants. Liposomes should not be confused with micelles and reverse micelles composed of monolayers.

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