Electrophoretic mobility and colloidal stability of PLGA particles coated with IgG

Drug delivery systems based on polymeric nanocarriers have been widely exploited during the last years. However, one of the basic problems that is still not totally solved in this kind of systems is the ability of delivering drugs to specific target cells. Coating the nanocarrier with reactive antibodies against specific molecules presented in the external membrane of the target cells is a usual recommendation. In this paper, an ideal delivery system has been studied. Nanoparticles made of poly(d,l-lactic acid/glycolic acid) 50/50 (PLGA) polymers have been coated with polyclonal IgG. In the first part of the paper, some basic characteristics of these IgG–PLGA complexes have been analysed (i.e. size, electrophoretic mobility and colloidal stability). Then, the immunoreactivity of the immobilized IgG molecules was tested by using an optical device, monitoring the binding of a standard molecule (C-reactive protein, CRP) to the antibody (antiCRP–IgG) adsorbed on the PLGA particles. This allowed us to estimate the percentage of active IgG molecules on the PLGA particles by applying a simple kinetic model to the immunoreactivity results. According to this model, the PLGA–IgG particles supply a good immunoresponse even if only less than 5% of the total IgG molecules on the surface were active. Despite the simplicity of the system, the results may be of potential interest for developing more realistic nanocarriers with targeting ability. That is, it can be inferred that it is possible to obtain a high targeting specificity in IgG-sensitized nanocarriers even working with a low coverage of active antibody molecules. The results have been compared with those similarly obtained with polystyrene (PS) particles used as a reference system.