Liposome production and concurrent loading of drug simulants by microfluidic hydrodynamic focusing

Liposomes are spherical vesicles enclosed by phospholipid bilayers. Nanoscale liposomes are widely employed for drug delivery in the pharmaceutical industry. In this study, nanoscale liposomes are fabricated using the microfluidic hydrodynamic focusing (MHF) approach, and the effects of flow rate ratio (FRR) on liposome size and drug loading efficiency are studied. Fluorescein isothiocyanate modified dextran is used as a hydrophilic drug simulant and Nile red is used as a hydrophobic drug simulant. The experiment results show that hydrophilic drug simulant loading efficiency increases as FRR increases and eventually plateaues at around 90% loading efficiency. The hydrophobic drug simulant loading efficiency and FRR have a positive linear correlation when FRR varies from 10 to 50. Concurrent loading of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic drug simulants maintains the same loading efficiencies as those of loading each drug simulant alone. A negative correlation between liposome size and FRR is also confirmed. Unloaded liposomes and hydrophilic drug-loaded liposomes are of the same sizes, and are smaller than the ones loaded with the hydrophobic drug simulants alone or combined. The results suggest tunable liposome size and drug loading efficiency with the MHF technique. This provides evidence to encourage further studies of microfluidic liposome fabrication in the pharmaceutical industry.