Protein encapsulation using cationic polymers is one of the methods that is being studied for forming nano size protein delivery vehicles. In designing an efficient drug carrier, many functions such as release capabilities, cell penetration, protein content per each carrier, and high efficiency of encapsulation need to be controlled. Surfactants are known to be penetration and permeation enhancers and show the most potential when integrated into a localized delivery. Furthermore, surfactants are known to lower the critical aggregate concentration of polymers. While the use of surfactants has been studied in micro-encapsulation, here, the effect of the surfactants is studied in the nano scale encapsulation of Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) as a model protein. To achieve this, encapsulation of BSA, with polyethylene glycol grafted polylysine is carried out in the presence of a zwitterionic surfactant.  A gel electrophoresis method is used to determine the extent of BSA encapsulation. The method is based on the difference in mobility of encapsulated and free proteins. Furthermore, the ability of the proposed vehicle to control release, co-encapsulation, and minimizing the effect of the ionic strength on encapsulation performance are studied. Moreover, design of a better therapeutic vehicle is only possible when the interactions between the components are understood. For this purpose, diffusion Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is utilized to study the interactions that can affect the efficiency of the proposed drug delivery vehicle. The self-diffusion of the components is utilized as the criteria for determining the surfactant Critical Micelle Concentration (CMC) and the polymer aggregation concentration in the presence of surfactant. Results of this study help to elucidate the protein-polymer and protein-surfactant interactions. <br/>

Protein encapsulation using cationic copolymers in the presence of zwitterionic surfactants

256th National Meeting (2018)

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