VIGNETTE 1.

3 COLLOIDAL CARGO CARRIERS-FROM COSMETICS TO

MEDICINE AND GENETIC ENGINEERING: Liposomes
with a Molecular Cargo and a Mission
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could package appropriate doses of medicine in physiologically
friendly capsules that can deliver the medicine specifically to the organs that need it while at
the same time keeping it away from areas that may find the medicine toxic? Or, perhaps, our
interest is much more mundane and all we need-to satisfy our vanity-is a method to trap
perfumes in our skins so that the fragrance lasts longer. These were hardly the questions that
engaged the attention of Alec Bangham, a British scientist who discovered surfactant capsules
known as liposomes in the early 1960s while studying the effect of lipid molecules on the
clotting of blood.
Liposomes are colloidal-size containers made of lipid bilayers (Fig. 1.3). A lipid molecule
consists of’ a polar, hydrophilic head that is attached to (one or two) hydrophobic,
hydrocarbon tails. At appropriate concentrations, the lipid molecules in water “self-assemble”
to form bilayers since the hydrophobic tails like to avoid contact with the water. When such
bilayers are broken up into small pieces, the fragments wrap themselves into closed structures
known as liposomes and encapsulate some of the water inside. The potential applications of
liposomes in cosmetics, pharmaceutical and medical technolog,y, and genetic engineering (for
studying basic properties of genes by isolating them inside a liposome or for developing
schemes for gene- or protein-replacement therapies) are numerous.