The aim of the current study was to analyse the particle size distribution of a liposome dispersion, which contained small egg phosphatidylcholine vesicles and had been prepared by high-pressure homogenisation, by various size analysis techniques. Such liposomes were chosen since they can be looked at as a prototype of drug nano-carriers. Three sub-micron particle size analysis techniques were employed: (1) fixed-angle quasi-elastic laser light scattering or photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS), (2) size exclusion chromatographic (SEC) fractionation with subsequent (off-line) PCS size-analysis and quantification of the amount of particles present in the sub-fractions, and (3) field-flow-fractionation coupled on-line with a static light scattering and a refractive index (RI)-detector. When designing liposome-based drug carrier systems, a reliable and reproducible analysis of their size and size distribution is of paramount importance: Not only does liposome size influence the nanocarrier's in-vitro characteristics such as drug loading capacity, aggregation and sedimentation but also it is generally acknowledged that the pharmacokinetic behaviour and biodistribution of the carrier is strongly size-dependent. All three approaches of liposome size analysis used here were found to yield useful results, although they were not fully congruent. PCS indicated either a broad, mono-modal, log-normal size distribution in the range of below 20 to over 200 nm in diameter, or alternatively, a bimodal distribution with two discrete peaks at 30 to 70 nm and 100 to over 200 nm. Which of the two distribution models represented the best fit depended primarily on the data collection times used. In contrast, both fractionating techniques revealed a size distribution with a large, narrow peak well below 50 nm and a minor, broad, overlapping peak or tail extending to over 100 nm in diameter. The observed differences in liposome size distribution may be explained by the inherent limitations of the different size analysis techniques, such as the detection limit and the fact that PCS is overemphasizing bigger particle sizes.

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Original Paper Asymmetric flow field-flow fractionation of liposomes: optimization of fractionation variablesThe purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of ionic strength of the carrier liquid, cross flow rate, focus flow rate, and sample load on the retention behavior of liposomes in asymmetric flow field-flow fractionation (AF4). Two differently prepared samples of large unilamellar vesicles (LUV) were used. Experiments were performed varying the factors systematically and evaluating their effect on both retention behavior of the liposomes and on particle size as obtained from online coupled multi-angle light scattering (MALS) analysis. The results showed that the focus flow rate had the least influence on the elution of liposomes. Elution of LUV is mainly governed by the chosen cross flow condition and ionic strength of the carrier liquid as well as its sample load. Optimal fractionation and size analysis were achieved using a sample load of about 10 lg, a cross flow gradient from 1.0 to 0.1 mL/min over 35 min and a carrier solution of NaNO 3 with a concentration of 10 mM. IntroductionLiposomes are vesicles consisting of an aqueous core surrounded by a phospholipid bilayer [1]. They have the ability to incorporate both amphiphilic and lipophilic compounds in their membrane-like bilayer as well as to encapsulate hydrophilic compounds [2]. Due to this ability liposomes have contributed to improving drug delivery of e.g., anthracyclines and play an important role in drug delivery research. It is widely accepted that liposomes as drug carriers may improve drug delivery in terms of therapeutic activity and safety [3 -5]. The size distribution of liposomes is important in terms of both the systemic circulation time upon injection into the blood stream and targeting abilities [3,6,7]. A study of the biodistribution of liposomes showed that the average size of the samples does not supply enough information and rather the size distribution should be used, especially for less homogeneous samples [7]. Asymmetric flow FFF (AF4) in combination with multi-angle light scattering (MALS) is the mostly applied sub-class of the FFF family and has gained increasing importance in the field of protein and peptide therapeutics as well as natural and synthetic polymers in recent years [8,9]. However, the number of publications about FFF of liposomes is rather limited compared to other applications and the technique has still not found widespread use despite it has various promising advantages over current particle size analysis methods such as photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS), and size exclusion chromatography [10,11]. For liposomal drug carriers a reliable size determination over the whole particle size spectrum from a few nanometers up to a micrometer could not be achieved with a single method so far. Such information on the other hand is essential for stringent control of the particle size which is governing the biodistribution and tumor targeting [7]. Despite a handful of successful attempts to characterize ...

Filter-extrusion is a widely used technique for down-sizing of phospholipid vesicles. In order to gain a detailed insight into size and size distributions of filter-extruded vesicles composed of egg phosphatidyl-choline (with varying fractions of cholesterol)--in relation to extrusion-parameters (pore-size, number of filter passages, and flow-rate), flow field-flow fractionation in conjunction with multi-angle laser light scattering (AF4-MALLS, Wyatt Technology Corp., Santa Barbara, CA) was employed. Liposome size-distributions determined by AF4-MALLS were compared with those of dynamic light scattering and correlated with cryo-transmission electron microscopy and (31)P-NMR-analysis of lamellarity. Both the mean size of liposome and the width of size distribution were found to decrease with sequential extrusion through smaller pore size filters, starting at a size range of ≈70-415 nm upon repeated extrusion through 400 nm pore-filters, eventually ending with a size range from ≈30 to 85 nm upon extrusion through 30 nm pore size filters. While for small pores sizes (50 nm), increased flow rates resulted in smaller vesicles, no significant influence of flow rate on mean vesicle size was seen with larger pores. Cholesterol at increasing mol fractions up to 0.45 yielded bigger vesicles (at identical process conditions). For a cholesterol mol fraction of 0.5 in combination with small filter pore size, a bimodal size distribution was seen indicating cholesterol micro-crystallites. Finally, a protocol is suggested to prepare large (∼ 300 nm) liposomes with rather narrow size distribution, based on the filter extrusion at defined flow-rates in combination with freeze-/thaw-cycling and bench-top centrifugation.