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Materials chemistry

Liposomes derived from molecular vases

Nature volume 489, pages 372–374 (2012)Cite this article

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Liposomes are ubiquitous components of skin moisturizers and other personal-care products. Modified liposomes prepared from receptor-like molecules open up fresh opportunities for therapeutic and industrial applications.

Liposomes — also known as vesicles — were serendipitously discovered in 1964 during investigations of phospholipids3. The demonstration of their encapsulation properties, and the remarkable structural resemblance between liposomes and cell membranes in electron micrographs, led to the realization that lipids form the main permeability barriers of biological membranes. Today, by far the largest use of liposomes and their encapsulating properties is in the multibillion-dollar personal-care industry4, as moisturizers and carriers of nutrients in gels and cream formulations. But they have also emerged as a research tool, within which biologists can isolate and study individual proteins (or a few selected proteins), rather than taking on the far more onerous task of working out the functions of the many associated proteins found in biological membranes.

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Figure 1: The evolution of liposomes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cyrus R. Safinya and Kai K. Ewert are in the Departments of Materials, Physics, and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA. They are also affiliated with the Materials Research Laboratory, University of California, Santa Barbara.,

    Cyrus R. Safinya & Kai K. Ewert

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  1. Cyrus R. Safinya
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  2. Kai K. Ewert
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Correspondence to Cyrus R. Safinya or Kai K. Ewert.

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Safinya, C., Ewert, K. Liposomes derived from molecular vases. Nature 489, 372–374 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/489372b

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