Archaeosomes can efficiently deliver different types of cargo into epithelial cells grown in vitro

Archaeosomes are a type of liposomes prepared from the polar lipids of various Archaeobacteria. These have unique structural features that increase the lipid bilayer's stability even under high temperatures, low or high pH, presence of phospholipases and bile salts. This makes them ideal as basis for the development of new drug, gene and vaccine delivery systems. In this study we prepared large unilamellar archaeosomes (400nm size) from Aeropyrum pernix K1 and demonstrated their potential as base for the development of an efficient and universal system for drug or therapy delivery to epithelial cells. Our archaeosomes may be used to deliver small fluorescent molecules (calcein), smaller proteins (60kDa listeriolysin), large protein aggregates (e.g. keratin 14) and plasmid DNA, into epithelial cells grown in culture. The delivery efficiency for small molecules is already quite high at this initial stage of development, around 40%. Our unilamellar archaeosomes are also not toxic to keratinocytes even at high doses (500μg/ml).