Preparation and validation of carrier human erythrocytes loaded by bovine serum albumin as a model antigen/protein.

Erythrocytes as the most readily available and abundant cells within the body have been studied extensively for their potential application as drug delivery carries. In this study, human erythrocytes were loaded by bovine serum albumin (BSA) as a model antigen/protein using hypotonic preswelling method for targeted delivery of this antigen-to antigen-presenting cells. The average loaded amount, efficiency of entrapment, and cell recovery upon loading procedure were 1979.25 +/- 9.4 microg, 30.06 +/- 0.20%, and 87.53 +/- 0.66%, respectively. The total BSA recovery upon loading procedure was 97.20 +/- 4.90%. The apparent mechanism of entrapment was simple concentration-based gradient in/out the cells with some minor limiting factors against protein entry into the cells. We have shown that the intra- and intersubject variations of the method were interestingly low (i.e., less than 5% in all cases).