An intelligent liposome that may deliver drug molecules in a well controlled fashion

TL;DRAbstract

Abstract The passage of molecules, especially large ones, through the cellular membrane is a very important problem for some biotechnological applications, such as drug delivery. The appearance of pores in the lipid bilayer following some controlled mechanisms may be an adequate and interesting way. Some pores, named stochastic pores, can appear due to structural and dynamic properties of lipid bilayer, but others may be favored by mechanical tension induced by different ways. Recently, a sequence of 30-40 pores was observed in the same vesicle, a pore at a time, which can appear in vesicles stretched by optical induced mechanical tension. There are two very interesting biotechnological applications that require the increase of membrane permeability: gene therapy and targeted drug delivery. In the first one, the transport of DNA fragments through cellular and nuclear membranes is required. The second application uses drug molecules encapsulated in vesicles, which have to be transported

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