COMPOSITIONAL HOMOGENEITY OF LIPOSOMAL MEMBRANES INVESTIGATED BY CAPILLARY-ELECTROPHORESIS

Capillary electrophoresis has been demonstrated to be a new powerful t ool for investigating the compositional homogeneity of liposomal membr anes composed of phospholipids and guest molecules. In the case of cha rged components distributed heterogeneously on membranes, electrophero grams show several distinguishable peaks even with monodisperse size d istributions of liposomes because each liposomal particle carries a di fferent amount of charge. The heterogeneity of noncharged components, when the lipids and the guest components have significantly different molar absorptivities at two different wavelengths, can also be judged from the signal ratio observed at the two wavelengths using a photodio de array detector. This new method can be used for the quality control of liposomal products. (C) 1998 Academic Press.