Chapter category: Drug Design
Engineered Red Blood Cells as Circulating Bioreactors
Erythrocyte Engineering for Drug Delivery and Targeting
Edited by: Mauro MagnaniISBN: 0-306-47691-6
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Chapter authors:
P. Ninfali and E. Biagiotti
Over the last twenty years, enzymes encapsulated in red blood cells (RBC) have proven to be efficient bioreactors in the clearance of undesired molecules from the blood stream and have shown an ability to correct congenital metabolic disorders. Highly efficient methods of entrapment based on hypotonic dialysis, resealing and annealing were set up and the loaded RBC were used in clinical trials. One of the most important applications was the use of asparaginase-loaded-RBC as a therapeutic tool in the treatment of lymphosarcomas and acute lymphoblastic anemia. In our laboratory, two main applications of enzyme-loaded RBC were tested for the clearance of toxic products of alcohol metabolism and the control of the glycemic state. Erythrocytes loaded with aldehyde dehydrogenase were shown to favour the depletion of acetaldehyde and ethanol in normal or alcoholic mice, and alcohol oxidase-loaded-RBC were efficiently used to deplete methanol and formaldehyde during methanol poisoning. The coentrapment of glucose oxidase and hexokinase was shown to be useful in the control of glycemia in a strain of diabetic mice.
Although liposomes are usually used nowadays to carry proteins, RBC loaded with proteins still remain an important tool in clinical biochemistry, particularly when a long in vivo circulation is required.
Additional chapters from this book:
Engineered Red Blood Cells as Circulating Bioreactors
P. Ninfali and E. Biagiotti
Over the last twenty years, enzymes encapsulated in red blood cells (RBC) have proven to be efficient bioreactors in the clearance of undesired molecules from the blood stream and have s...
Design and Synthesis of New Pro-Drugs to be Used with Carrier Red Blood Cells
S. ScarfÏ, G. Damonte and U. Benatti
Nowadays, increasing attention is devoted to new systems of controlled in vivo delivery of biologically active molecules, the primary aim being to overcome some disadvantages of conventional s...
Drug-Loaded Red Blood Cells for the Control of the Inflammatory Response: Selective Targeting of Nuclear Factor-kB (NF-kB)
R. Crinelli, A. Antonelli, M. Bianchi, L. Gentilini and M. Magnani
While the causes of inflammatory diseases remain unknown, transcription factors are increasingly being found to play a pivotal role in the development and maintenance of these pathologies. In ...
Erythrocytes as Carriers of Anthracycline Antibiotics in vitro and in
Victor M. Vitvitsky
Modern pharmacology largely relies on the use of drugs that selectively affect their target cells and tissues. The selectivity of antibacterial drugs of new generations is quite high. It comes...
Red Blood Cells as Carriers of Antiviral Agents
A. Fraternale, A. Casabianca and M. Magnani
In an attempt to overcome the problems of nucleoside analogue toxicity and of their limited efficacy and short plasma half-life we have investigated the possibility of using erythrocytes both ...
Engineered Nanoerythrocytes as a Novel Drug Delivery System
Sanjay Jain and N. K. Jain
Engineered nanoerythrocytes (nEs) as a novel controlled drug delivery system is a topic of interest to the pharmacist working in industry, research and development, academia, drug control admi...
Vaccination Strategy Using Red Blood Cells as Antigen Delivery System
Laura Chiarantini
The use of adjuvants is usually required to induce strong immunological responses to protein antigen. However, serious side effects preclude their use in human vaccines. Currently, the only ad...
Streptavidin-Mediated Coupling of Therapeutic Proteins to Carrier Erythrocytes
Vladimir R. Muzykantov and Juan-Carlos Murciano
Red blood cells (RBC) can provide a natural, safe and abundant carrier to prolong the life-time in the bloodstream and thus enhance the efficacy of certain therapeutic agents, while restrictin...
Targeting Drug Loaded Red Blood Cells
Mauro Magnani, Luigia Rossi and Giorgio Brandi
Targeting of drugs can be achieved in a number of ways usually conjugating the drug of interest with specific ligands or by engineering the properties of the carrier system. In this paper we s...
Towards Activated Release of Payloads from Carrier Erythrocytes
A.M. Rollan and A.P. McHale
Although the potential of erythrocytes as drug delivery vehicles has been suggested for some time, the applicability of this approach has been limited by the lack of a mechanism to achieve act...
Red Blood Cell Loading
Luigia Rossi, Sonja Serafini and Mauro Magnani
In this Chapter a selection of procedures for the encapsulation of a wide range of molecules into red blood cells is reported. Electroporation, drug-induced endocytosis, osmotic pulsing and hy...
