This letter presents our first results on the structural changes in DPPC multilamellar vesicles dispersed in water in the presence of the anti-cancer agent Ellipticine. The thermotropic phase transitions of the lamellar packing inside lipid vesicles were characterized in situ by small angle X ray diffraction. The results lead to the determination of a critical concentration value for drug loading on the vesicle system around 4% molar fraction of Ellipticine, an indication of the localization of the drug in the alkyl chains and the influence of the drug on the decreasing rate of the bilayer period after the main phase transition.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00249-006-0077-3 | DOI Listing |
Soft Matter
January 2025
Department of Physics and Soft Materials Research Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
The current intense study of ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals was initiated by the observation of the same ferroelectric nematic phase in two independently discovered organic, rod-shaped, mesogenic compounds, RM734 and DIO. We recently reported that the compound RM734 also exhibits a monotropic, low-temperature, apolar phase having reentrant isotropic symmetry (the I phase), the formation of which is facilitated to a remarkable degree by doping with small (below 1%) amounts of the ionic liquid BMIM-PF. Here we report similar phenomenology in DIO, showing that this reentrant isotropic behavior is not only a property of RM734 but is rather a more general, material-independent feature of ferroelectric nematic mesogens.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMolecules
December 2024
REQUIMTE, LAQV, Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas de Abel Salazar, Universidade do Porto, Rua Jorge Viterbo Ferreira, 228, 4050-313 Porto, Portugal.
In this study, we synthesized a series of 3-hydroxy-4-pyridinone (3,4-HPO) chelators with varying lipophilicity by modifying the length of their alkyl chains. To investigate their interaction with lipid membranes, we employed differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy using dimyristoylphosphatidylcholine (DMPC) and palmitoyloleoylphosphatidylcholine (POPC) liposomes as membrane model systems. DSC experiments on DMPC liposomes revealed that hexyl-substituted chelators significantly altered the thermotropic phase behavior of the lipid bilayer, indicating their potential as membrane property modulators.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Membr Biol
December 2024
Faculty of Science, Department of Physics, Ege University, 35100, Bornova, Izmir, Turkey.
Phys Chem Chem Phys
December 2024
Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, 80309, USA.
We show that stable, freely suspended liquid crystal films can be made from the ferroelectric nematic (N) phase and from the recently discovered polar, lamellar SmZ and SmA phases. The N films display two-dimensional, smectic-like parabolic focal conic textures comprising director/polarization bend that are a manifestation of the electrostatic suppression of director splay in the film plane. In the SmZ and SmA phases, the smectic layers orient preferentially normal to the film surfaces, a condition never found in typical thermotropic or lyotropic lamellar LC phases, with the SmZ films exhibiting focal-conic fan textures mimicking the appearance of typical smectics in glass cells when the layers are oriented normal to the plates, and the SmA films showing a texture of plaquettes of uniform in-plane orientation where both bend and splay are suppressed, separated by grain boundaries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMaterials (Basel)
November 2024
Section of Pharmaceutical Technology, Department of Pharmacy, School of Health Sciences, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Panepistimioupolis Zografou, 15771 Athens, Greece.
The aim of the present study is to evaluate the stability of DMPC:Pluronic F-127 and DPPC:Pluronic F-127 liposomes, both with and without incorporated quercetin. Quercetin belongs to the class of flavonoids and has shown antioxidant, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, and antimicrobial activities. Dynamic light scattering, electrophoretic light scattering, and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) were utilized to investigate the cooperative behavior between liposomal components and its effect on stability.
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