TY - JOUR
T1 - On-chip density-based purification of liposomes
AU - Deshpande, Siddharth
AU - Birnie, A.T.F.
AU - Dekker, Cees
PY - 2017/5/1
Y1 - 2017/5/1
N2 - Due to their cell membrane-mimicking properties, liposomes have served as a versatile research tool in science, from membrane biophysics and drug delivery systems to bottom-up synthetic cells. We recently reported a novel microfluidic method, Octanol-assisted Liposome Assembly (OLA), to form cell-sized, monodisperse, unilamellar liposomes with excellent encapsulation efficiency. Although OLA provides crucial advantages over alternative methods, it suffers from the presence of 1-octanol droplets, an inevitable by-product of the production process. These droplets can adversely affect the system regarding liposome stability, channel clogging, and imaging quality. In this paper, we report a density-based technique to separate the liposomes from droplets, integrated on the same chip. We show that this method can yield highly pure (>95%) liposome samples. We also present data showing that a variety of other separation techniques (based on size or relative permittivity) were unsuccessful. Our density-based separation approach favourably decouples the production and separation module, thus allowing freshly prepared liposomes to be used for downstream on-chip experimentation. This simple separation technique will make OLA a more versatile and widely applicable tool.
AB - Due to their cell membrane-mimicking properties, liposomes have served as a versatile research tool in science, from membrane biophysics and drug delivery systems to bottom-up synthetic cells. We recently reported a novel microfluidic method, Octanol-assisted Liposome Assembly (OLA), to form cell-sized, monodisperse, unilamellar liposomes with excellent encapsulation efficiency. Although OLA provides crucial advantages over alternative methods, it suffers from the presence of 1-octanol droplets, an inevitable by-product of the production process. These droplets can adversely affect the system regarding liposome stability, channel clogging, and imaging quality. In this paper, we report a density-based technique to separate the liposomes from droplets, integrated on the same chip. We show that this method can yield highly pure (>95%) liposome samples. We also present data showing that a variety of other separation techniques (based on size or relative permittivity) were unsuccessful. Our density-based separation approach favourably decouples the production and separation module, thus allowing freshly prepared liposomes to be used for downstream on-chip experimentation. This simple separation technique will make OLA a more versatile and widely applicable tool.
UR - http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:383c4616-0fb6-4313-a49f-7182557a61e5
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85019076323&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1063/1.4983174
DO - 10.1063/1.4983174
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85019076323
SN - 1932-1058
VL - 11
SP - 1
EP - 13
JO - Biomicrofluidics
JF - Biomicrofluidics
IS - 3
M1 - 034106
ER -