Liposomes are established drug delivery vehicles. We have extended the utility of liposomes and present vesicles that are mechanoresponsive: the vesicles are stable on the bench but will release their cargo when they are exposed to shear forces. This allows for a purely physics-based drug targeting to the site of a stenosed artery after a heart attack. The technology is based on synthetic phospholipids that self-assemble into faceted gel phase vesicles. In this presentation the concept of mechanoresponsive drug delivery is introduced together with first promising data on the in vitro and in vivo tolerance of the artificial, faceted vesicles.

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Bio

Andreas Zumbuehl is a Swiss National Science Foundation Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Fribourg. He studied Chemistry at the ETH Zürich and holds a PhD degree from the same institute. He spent his postdoctoral years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Biozentrum Basel. In 2008 he became Maître Assistant at the University of Geneva where he started his independent research on the synthesis and physical chemistry of artificial phospholipids. In 2012 he moved to the University of Fribourg.