Means of preparation and applications of liposomes containing high concentrations of entrapped ionic species

摘要

Unilamellar vesicles comprising a lipid bilayer, an ionophore being incorporated in said lipid bilayer, a chelating agent entrapped within the vesicles, and an effective amount of physiologically compatible cation bound to said chelating agent within the vesicles. Unilamellar vesicles are loaded by incubating the vesicles with the cation, terminating the incubation and recovering the loaded vesicles by chromatography. In some applications of the invention, the cation may be a radioactive tracer, in which case the vesicles can be administered to the human host and observed by scintillation techniques to produce a radioimage which is useful for diagnostic purposes.