Palmitoylpolysaccharide-coated Liposomes As A Potential Oral Drug Carrier

경구용 약물수송체로서의 팔미토일 치환 다당체로 코팅된 리포좀

Applications of liposomes as a drug carrier for the oral delivery of poorly-absorbable macromolecular drugs have been limited, because of their instability in gastrointestinal environments including pH, bile salts, and digestive enzymes. Two polysaccharides, dextran(DX) and pullulan(PL), were introduced to the preformed liposomes in order to enhance the stability. Palmitoyl derivatives of polysaccharides, palmitoyldextran(PalDX) and palmitoylpullulan(PalPL), were synthesizd and introduced to the liposomes during preparation for the same purpose of stability. The effects of these polysaccharides coating were evaluated basically by physical properties of particle size distribution and optical microscopy, then compared with uncoated liposomes by the observations of both in vitro stability and in vovo absorption characteristics. The geometric mean diameters of polysaccharide-coated liposomes were greater than that of uncoated liposome, showing the outermost polysaccharide-coated layer under the optical microscopy. In vitro stabilities of uncoated or polysaccharides-coated liposomes were measured by turbidity changes in various pH buffer solutions containing sodium choleate as bile salts. While uncoated liposome was very sensitive to bile salts, polysaccharides-coated liposomes were stable in relatively higher concentrations of sodium choleate, giving the results of better stability of PalDX- and PalPL-coated liposomes than that of DX- and PL-coated liposomes. After liposomal encapsulation of acyclovir(ACV), an antiviral agent as a model drug, it has been administered orally to rats as dose of ACV 40 mg/kg. Plasma concentrations of ACV were assayed by HPLC and analyzed by model-independent pharmacokinetics. Pharmacokinetic parameters of Cmax, tmax, and [AUC] have been compared.