Point of use production of liposomal solubilised products

Abstract

With the progression towards personalised and age-appropriate medicines, the production of drug loaded liposomes at the point of care would be highly desirable. In particular, liposomal solubilisation agents that can be produced rapidly and easily would provide a new option in personalised medicines. Such a process could also be used as a rapid tool for the formulation and pre-clinical screening of low soluble drugs. Within this paper, we outline a novel easy-to-use production method for point of use production of liposome solubilised drugs. Our results demonstrate that pre-formed multilamellar liposomes, stored in a fresh or frozen format, can be bilayer loaded with low solubility drugs using a simple bath sonication process. Sonication is undertaken in a sealed vial allowing the contents to remain sterile. Liposomes around 100 nm were prepared and these liposomes were able to increase the amount of drug dissolved by up to 10 fold. These liposomal solubilisation agents were stable in terms of size and drug solubilisation for up to 8 days when stored in the fridge making them an easy to use and robust small-scale tool for drug solubilisation.