Encapsulation efficiency of water-soluble and insoluble drugs in liposomes prepared by the microencapsulation vesicle method

The microencapsulation vesicle (MCV) method is a liposome preparation technique that reproducibly produces liposomes with homogeneous particle sizes with a high encapsulation efficiency. Liposomes encapsulating water-soluble drugs, lipophilic drugs and an amphiphilic drug were prepared by the MCV method and the encapsulation efficiency of the drugs was examined. Three kinds of egg yolk lecithin with different iodine values, i.e., purified egg yolk lecithin (PEL), partially hydrogenated purified egg yolk lecithin (R-20) and completely hydrogenated purified egg yolk lecithin (R-5), were used for membrane materials in order to explore the possible effects of membrane rigidity or surface area on the encapsulation efficiency of the drug. Water-soluble 5-fluorouracil showed 12-15% encapsulation efficiency, which was higher than those reported in the literature (less than 10%). With the MCV method, theoretically the initial drug-containing water phase was always separated from the dispersion medium by the lecithin-containing oil phase, which was advantageous to maintaining a higher encapsulation efficiency of the water-soluble drug. The encapsulation efficiency of lipophilic ibuprofen and flurbiprofen was around 90%. As for ketoprofen and liposomes were not formed when using hydrogenated egg yolk lecithin R-5, while the encapsulation efficiency using PEL or R-20 was around 80%. Amphiphilic amitriptyline hydrochloride resulted in a slightly higher encapsulation efficiency when dissolved in the water than the chloroform. Among the three kinds of lecithin, the most unsaturated PEL tended to show a higher encapsulation efficiency, probably due to differences in the packing geometry of the hydrophobic carbon chains in the membrane bilayer. The encapsulation efficiency of these drugs strongly correlated to the log Poctanol/water and also tended to correlate to the log Pchloroform/water for the order of the log Pchloroform/water was almost the same as the order of the log Poctanol/water in the drugs examined. As far as the results of this study, the log Poctanol/water was considered to be a better indicator of the encapsulation efficiency of a drug in the MCV method.