by Keyword: Plasmodium yoelii
Martí Coma-Cros, Elisabet, Biosca, Arnau, Lantero, Elena, Manca, Maria, Caddeo, Carla, Gutiérrez, Lucía, Ramírez, Miriam, Borgheti-Cardoso, Livia, Manconi, Maria, Fernàndez-Busquets, Xavier, (2018). Antimalarial activity of orally administered curcumin incorporated in Eudragit®-containing liposomes International Journal of Molecular Sciences 19, (5), 1361 
Curcumin is an antimalarial compound easy to obtain and inexpensive, having shown little toxicity across a diverse population. However, the clinical use of this interesting polyphenol has been hampered by its poor oral absorption, extremely low aqueous solubility and rapid metabolism. In this study, we have used the anionic copolymer Eudragit® S100 to assemble liposomes incorporating curcumin and containing either hyaluronan (Eudragit-hyaluronan liposomes) or the water-soluble dextrin Nutriose® FM06 (Eudragit-nutriosomes). Upon oral administration of the rehydrated freeze-dried nanosystems administered at 25/75 mg curcumin·kg−1·day−1, only Eudragit-nutriosomes improved the in vivo antimalarial activity of curcumin in a dose-dependent manner, by enhancing the survival of all Plasmodium yoelii-infected mice up to 11/11 days, as compared to 6/7 days upon administration of an equal dose of the free compound. On the other hand, animals treated with curcumin incorporated in Eudragit-hyaluronan liposomes did not live longer than the controls, a result consistent with the lower stability of this formulation after reconstitution. Polymer-lipid nanovesicles hold promise for their development into systems for the oral delivery of curcumin-based antimalarial therapies.
JTD Keywords: Malaria, Curcumin, Nanomedicine, Oral administration, Lipid nanovesicles, Eudragit, Nutriose, Hyaluronan, Plasmodium yoelii
Moles, E., Galiano, S., Gomes, A., Quiliano, M., Teixeira, C., Aldana, I., Gomes, P., Fernàndez-Busquets, X., (2017). ImmunoPEGliposomes for the targeted delivery of novel lipophilic drugs to red blood cells in a falciparum malaria murine model Biomaterials 145, 178-191
Most drugs currently entering the clinical pipeline for severe malaria therapeutics are of lipophilic nature, with a relatively poor solubility in plasma and large biodistribution volumes. Low amounts of these compounds do consequently accumulate in circulating Plasmodium-infected red blood cells, exhibiting limited antiparasitic activity. These drawbacks can in principle be satisfactorily dealt with by stably encapsulating drugs in targeted nanocarriers. Here this approach has been adapted for its use in immunocompetent mice infected by the Plasmodium yoelii 17XL lethal strain, selected as a model for human blood infections by Plasmodium falciparum. Using immunoliposomes targeted against a surface protein characteristic of the murine erythroid lineage, the protocol has been applied to two novel antimalarial lipophilic drug candidates, an aminoquinoline and an aminoalcohol. Large encapsulation yields of >90% were obtained using a citrate-buffered pH gradient method and the resulting immunoliposomes reached in vivo erythrocyte targeting and retention efficacies of >80%. In P. yoelii-infected mice, the immunoliposomized aminoquinoline succeeded in decreasing blood parasitemia from severe to uncomplicated malaria parasite densities (i.e. from ≥25% to ca. 5%), whereas the same amount of drug encapsulated in non-targeted liposomes had no significant effect on parasite growth. Pharmacokinetic analysis indicated that this good performance was obtained with a rapid clearance of immunoliposomes from the circulation (blood half-life of ca. 2 h), suggesting a potential for improvement of the proposed model.
JTD Keywords: Immunoliposomes, Malaria, Nanomedicine, Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium yoelii 17XL, Targeted drug delivery
