Construction and evaluation of bacteria-driven liposome

Many people proposed living things as actuators, for example microbes, cell and protein molecules. To address these problems for biomedical application, especially drug delivery system, a novel, miniature, and energy-efficient propulsion concept is proposed in this paper. Some bacteria have flagellar motor for swimming in water environment. The bacterial flagellar motor is a molecular machine that converts ion-motive force into mechanical force. Liposome is well known component for drug delivery. This vesicle can contain biologically active compounds. We proposed a new integration method of these two functions, bacteria motility and liposome carrier. Bacteria and liposome are combined through antibody binding technique and we have created a bacteria-driven liposome easily. Consequently, the effect of antibody when bacteria attached to liposome is studied experimentally. Furthermore, the stochastic nature of bacterial bio propulsion of liposome is investigated. It is shown that the mobility of liposome with bacteria was higher than that of liposome without bacteria and demonstrate potential for highly-functional drug delivery system. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.