Design and Charecterization of Anticancer Engineered Resealed Erythrocytes
A number of investigators have been focusing their attention on the encapsulation of antineoplastic drugs within erythrocytes to diminish their side effects. In this study, human erythrocytes have been loaded by methotrexate (MTX) as a model drug using hypotonic hemolysis method for targeted delivery of this drug. A series of in vitro tests have been carried out to characterize the carrier cells in vitro, including loading parameters, hemoglobin release kinetics, particle size distribution, SEM analysis, osmotic and turbulence fragilities. Carrier erythrocytes having acceptable loading parameters, released their drug content according to zero-order kinetics. Mean corpuscular hemoglobin content values of the cells decreased, the apparent cell sizes measured using dynamic laser scattering, were not significantly different from normal erythrocytes, but the real sizes, measured using SEM, and surface topologies were quite different between loaded and unloaded cells. The MTX-loaded cells were remarkably more fragile compared to the normal cells. Drug loaded erythrocytes showed preferential drug targeting to liver followed by lungs, kidney and spleen. Totally, MTX-loaded erythrocytes seem to be a promising delivery system for targeting the drug to reticuloendothelial system (RES).