Nanocochleate:A Review

The nanocochleate drug delivery vehicle is based upon encapsulating drugs in a multilayered, lipid crystal matrix (a cochleate) to potentially deliver the drug safely and effectively. Nanocochleates are cylindrical (cigar-like) microstructures that consist of a series of lipid bilayers. Nanocochleate delivery vehicles are stable phospholipid-cation precipitates composed of simple, naturally occurring materials, generally phosphatidylserine and calcium. They have a unique multilayered structure consisting of a solid, lipid bilayer sheet rolled up in a spiral or in stacked sheets, with little or no internal aqueous space. This structure provides protection from degradation for associated "encochleated" molecules negatively charged lipids and drugs or peptides acting as the inter‐bi‐layer bridges instead of multi‐cationic metal ions. This new type of cochleate opened up to form large liposomes when treated with cationic salt, suggesting that cationic organic molecules can be extracted from these cochleates in a way similar to multivalent metal ions from metal ion‐bridged cochleates. Cochleates can be produced in sub‐micron size using a method known as "hydrogel cochleation" or simply by increasing the ratio of multivalent cationic peptides over negatively charged liposomes. When nanometer‐sized cochleates and liposomes containing the same fluorescent labeled lipid component were incubated with human fibroblasts cells under identical conditions.