Trehalose freeze-dried liposomes stability

Freeze-dried liposomes loaded with doxorubicin (DXR) have been stored for 6 months at temperatures between -20 and +50 °C. Up to 30 °C, no sign of degradation was found, but at 40-50 °C, well below the Tg of the dried cake, the total DXR content and the retention of the drag after dehydration decreased, whereas the size of the liposomes increased to a certain extent. The stability with RM below 1% was better than with RM 2.5-3.5%. Lactose, trehalose and maltose have similar lyoprotectant properties, whereas liposomes with sucrose showed an increase in size. 

Effects of Trehalose on the Stability and Phase Transition Behavior of Freeze-Dried Liposomes Containing Cholesterol... 

Crowe and Crowe [3.39] proved that it is sufficient for certain liposomes, e. g. egg phosphatidyl-choline (DPPC), to be vitrified by trehalose or dextran during freezing and freeze drying. In trehalose the retention rate was almost 100 %, and in dextran more than 80 %. This did not apply to egg PC-liposomes Dextran as CPA alone led to an almost total loss of the CF-indicator, but addition of dextran into a trehalose solution (Fig. 3.20) also reduced the retention rate of CF substantially, e. g. from 90 % in a pure trehalose to approx. 45 % if trehalose and dextran were in equal amounts in the solution. Since T of dextran is approx. -10 °C and Tg- of trehalose is -30 to -32 °C, dextran should form a glass phase at much higher temperatures than trehalose. Therefore the stabilization of egg- PC with trehalose cannot be related with the vitrification. Crowe showd with IR spectroscopy that egg-PC freeze dried with 2 g trehalose/g lipid had almost the identical spectrographic characteristics as the hydrous lipid Trehalose molecules replaced the water molecules, and hydrogen... 

Studies with the freeze dried DPPC liposomes in trehalose solution showed, that not Tg )f the amorphous sugar is the critical temperature during storage, but the bilayer transition emperature Tm. for the lyposomes determines the short term stability of the formulation. With trehalose as lyoprotectant and a low residual water content, Tm proved to be 10 to 30 °C below the onset of T . 30 min heating above Tm but well below T% decreased the retention of CF after rehydration. Tm< after the heating was reduced from 40 to 80 °C to below 25 °C. 

In this work, we have analyzed the phase behavior of various freeze-dried mixtures of DPPE, DPPC, and cholesterol and have examined the effects of trehalose addition to these liposomes. Generally, dehydration leads to increase in transition temperature of the phospholipids and also to phase separation. Addition of trehalose, however, can prevent the increase in transition temperature and phase separation freeze-dried DPPC-cholesterol liposomes exhibit only one transition and their retention capability increases by more than 40%. Further studies on the phase separation and stability of multicomponent model membranes will be required to understand better its relation to the survival of cells to freeze-drying procedures. 

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