Liposomes Production by Supercritical Fluids (SCF)

Seattle Genova has spent years developing liposome technologies, and our extensive experience qualifies us as experts in liposome preparation and manufacturing. Our liposome platform's goal is to provide you with high-quality liposome services ranging from custom liposome production, analysis, and characterization to application.

Liposomes are utilized as nanovectors to encapsulate many active molecules with a prolongation of the drug effect, to target specific tissues or to decrease certain side effects. Innovative therapies utilizing nanovectors have been evolved and accepted for clinical trials, however their conventional techniques of production suffer from drawbacks such as the usage of large quantities of organic solvents, the small quantities produced and the multiple steps involved in the production that prevent the production at industrial scale. For many years, supercritical fluid-based preparation methods have been considered as a a promising alternative to conventional liposome preparation techniques. The supercritical fluid can function as a solvent or a cosolvent for the lipids material which are next put in connection with an aqueous solution before or during the depressurization. 

The challenges ever faced by pharmaceutical industry is primarily due to discovery of new drugs and development of new technologies. Supercritical fluid (SCF) technology is one such technique, which has become an a significant tool in the production of various particulate systems along with extraction and drying of protein and peptides during previous couple of decade because of its specific properties such as flexibility in use, decreased environmental concern and its simplicity.

Advantages and Applications of SCF Method

• In order to deal with the issues with current conventional procedures, such as the demand for a large number of hazardous organic solvents and the limitation of laboratory scale production, supercritical fluids are presented in the synthesis of liposomes.

• The supercritical fluid can also be utilized as an antisolvent to induce the formation of proliposomes which can be smoothly converted into liposomes by hydration.

• SCF can be utilized as a dispersing agent in order to finely disperse the lipid molecules into an aqueous medium. 

• Supercritical carbon dioxide is the greatly often used supercritical fluid in the pharmaceutical industry for the synthesis of liposomes.

• It delivers a number of advantages, including being non-toxic, non-flammable, recyclable, simple to remove from the solvent, operating at moderate temperatures, and preventing product degradation in an inert environment.

• Acetone, ethanol, methanol, dichloromethane, and ethyl acetate are examples of modifier solvents that can be added as cosolvents to alter the extraction conditions when utilizing SCF.

Service Highlights

• Varied types of liposome-based drug delivery systems

• Controlled/sustained release drug delivery system

• Pre-formulation, formulation feasibility and prototype development

• A combination of mature preparation technologies are available

• Different identification and standardization methods

• Procedure optimization (experimental design) and aseptic filtration

REFERENCES

1. Yuya Murakami, Keita Inoue, Ryunosuke Akiyama, Yasuhiko Orita, Yusuke Shimoyama. LipTube: Liposome Formation in the Tube Process Using Supercritical CO2. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 2022, 61 (39) , 14598-14608.

2. Paolo Trucillo, Roberta Campardelli, Iolanda De Marco. Experimental Study of Water Jet Break-Up in and Supercritical Carbon Dioxide. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 2019, 58 (49) , 22389-22398.

3. Eun-Sol Ha, Hui-Taek Kang, Heejun Park, Sebin Kim, Min-Soo Kim. Advanced technology using supercritical fluid for particle production in pharmaceutical continuous manufacturing. Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation 2022, 538.