 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
Lipid vesicle fusion, and hence ATP delivery, are coupled events involving both fusion and delivery. In order to achieve lipid vesicle fusion with the cell membrane, there are two requirements.
1) The first requirement is to make the lipid vesicle highly fusogenic. Lipid vesicles can be made in a variety of sizes and are named accordingly. Multilamellar vesicles (which are commonly called liposomes) have multiple layers of lipid and water, whereas large unilamellar vesicles and small unilamellar vesicles, such as the vesicles employed by our group, have a single bilayer of phospholipid. Small unilamellar vesicles, which have a very tight radius of curvature, are very fusogenic.
2) The second requirement is to change the bilayer composition so that it has a high kinetic energy. Indeed, our research team has also previously demonstrated that changes in lipid composition can dramatically alter fusion rates of small unilamellar vesicles. Further modifications have already been made (and protected in patent claims), including changing the charge of the phospholipid head group, increasing mean molecular area of the lipids, creating dissimilar regions of lipids, and increasing the kinetic energy. By making the above changes, our proprietary small unilamellar vesicles have shown highly energetic properties.
Our fusogenic lipid vesicles (figure 3) meet the two requirements above and are produced by our proprietary technique for effective encapsulation and delivery of ATP. With every lipid vesicle that fuses with a target cell, thousands of ATP molecules are delivered to the cytosol of the cell.
Figure 3. Fusogenic Lipid VesiclesLipid vesicles are essentially cell membranes that: » Are simple and easy to make » Contain an aqueous portion that can hold substances » Can be made to fuse with cells |
© 2007 Novera Pharmaceuticals. All rights reserved.
A VitaTech Company
201 East Jefferson Street, Suite 104, Louisville, KY 40202
p 502.569.1030 — f 502.569.1029
info@noveradrugs.com
VitaTech is a registered trademark of VitaTech Engineering
Web site developed by Cytenance