Abstract
Liposomes that are developed to be used as drug carriers in therapy have to be sufficiently stable on storage. There is no consensus on the exact requirements, but shelf lives of over one year are certainly preferable. Liposomes can be unstable for a number of reasons. The liposome structure can change because of aggregation or fusion processes (physical stability), the associated drug can leak out of the vesicles and the phospholipids or the associated drug might be chemically unstable (hydrolysis, oxidation).1,2 All these changes might have an impact on the therapeutic effect of the product. Therefore, concepts were developed to improve liposome stability on storage. These concepts can be classified into three classes:
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1)
Storage of liposomes as aqueous dispersions.
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2)
Storage of liposomes in frozen condition or as a freeze dried product (removal of water by sublimation).
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3)
Storage of liposomes as concentrated dispersions or after removal of all “free” water via evaporation.
The “state of the art” and the pros and cons of these three approaches will be discussed in this contribution.
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© 1986 Plenum Press, New York
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Crommelin, D.J.A., Fransen, G.J., Salemink, P.J.M. (1986). Stability of Liposomes on Storage. In: Gregoriadis, G., Senior, J., Poste, G. (eds) Targeting of Drugs With Synthetic Systems. NATO ASI Series, vol 113. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-5185-6_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-5185-6_20
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