Lyophilizable vesicles without lyoprotectants

Kurzfassung

A Spanish university has developed a method to form unilamellar vesicles by a mixed system between water soluble calixarene and single chain surfactant after sonication of the aqueous dispersion. The vesicles can be stored, without use of lyoprotectants, by lyophilization and then rehydration without change in size or shape. The university is looking for a licence agreement.

Details

The lyophilization or freeze-drying is a process generally used for long-term storage and transport of non durable materials like food, biological materials, etc. In recent years, the storage of vesicles by lyophilization has been examined both from a pharmaceutical and biological perspectives. The freeze-drying process improves the vesicles usefulness as drug carriers because of their prolonged shelf life. However, the conventional vesicle`s structure is lost during the freeze-drying process. To protect the vesicles against the stress of drying the use of carbohydrates was introduced (lyoprotection).

The vesicles created by the new method don't need any protector since after rehydration, the vesicles forms spontaneously without significant changes in size or shape. In addition of drug delivery, these vesicles can also be used in cosmetic industry.

Innovative Aspects:
The principal feature of these vesicles is its potential or ability to be stored and rehydrated on demand without any significant changes in size or shape. Another important feature is the fact of not having to add any lyoprotector before freeze-drying to prevent alterations in the size after rehydration, as often happens in such systems. But even adding the lyoprotector, such assemblies tend to increase their size, and also in many cases proceed again to sonication. In this proceeding this does not happen, since the vesicles are formed spontaneously after rehydration, and in turn did not significantly change its size, and consequently do not alter their properties.
The lack of toxicity and immune response of calixarene derivates enable new applications of these macrocycles in biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences.