Types Of Liposome And Their Importance To The Body

By Juliette Cruz


Liposome is a small artificially made vesicle with lipid bi-layers. It is used as a medium for transportation of pharmaceutical drugs and nutrients. These structures are filled with drugs for diseases including cancer and transport them to cells. They are made of similar material with the cell membrane called natural phospholipids, which are usually found in two layers in stable membranes.

Cell membranes usually consist of phospholipids molecules with tail and head groups. The tail had hydrocarbon chain that resists water and the head is water friendly. Disruption of the phospholipids membranes, leads to presence of small spheres that repair and form bi-layers and monolayers. The monolayers form the micelles and the bi-layers form the liposomes.

The organelle is made of natural phospholipids, and sometimes contains lipid chains mixed with surfactant properties such as egg phosphatidylethanolamine or pure surfactant components, for instance, dioleoylphosphatidylethanolamine (DOPE). It also uses surface ligands to help attach to unhealthy tissue within individual body.

There are three major types of this structure and include small and large uni-lamellar vesicles, and the multi-lamellar vesicle. The names do not relate the size but to phospholipids which is their primary building blocks. They usually contain aqueous solution at the central part, unlike micelles unless they are the reverse ones that encompass in aqueous environment.

The word liposome was derived from lipos, a Greek word that means fat and soma meaning a body. This structure was initially explained in Cambridge at Babraham institute by Dr Alec D Bangham FRS, a British hematologist in 1961. Horne and Bangham discovered them when they were drying phospholipids using a negative stain to test the new electron microscope of the institute.

Unique characteristics that these structures have, helps them in their delivery of drugs across the membrane. They put together a region in an environment in hydrophobic membrane that is aqueous. Solutes that have already dissolved in water are sieved by the lipid layers. As a result, substances both hydrophobic and hydrophilic are easily carried to action sites. They also mingle with other lipid bi-layers and in the process leave behind their content. Transformation of DNA to the cell of the host using this organelle is lipofection.

Transportation of drugs and DNA molecules is done through a solution with liposome, which help the substances be carried across the membrane. Also, small sizes of this structure are usually use to access to the macrophage as they feed through phagocytes. They are digested together with other substance where they get the chance to discharge the drug.

Other functions include delivering of dyes to textile fibers, herbicides and pesticides to plants, cosmetics to different skins and enzymes that add nutrition to foods. They are also capable of targeting cancer tumors naturally within the cells. They attack the tumors from the bloodstream where they leave the cancer drugs filled in them. Today many cancer treatment medications are delivered in this way.

In summary, liposome is an important structure that works to transport DNA and drugs, which is not possible by cell membrane. Production of those that have particulate sizes allows this structure to move across membranes and go to the targeted areas of the body; hence able to treat a disease.




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