Studying The Effect of Lipid Chain Size on Localization of Plasma Membrane Anchors on Red Blood Cell

The blood stream is a natural high way of the body while the red blood cells (RBC) are the vehicles that can travel along the system. The ability of RBC’s to reach almost all parts of the body has made them a suitable candidate for drug delivery. Utilization of RBCs for drug delivery systems (DDS) greatly improves biocompatibility and achieves one step towards personalized therapy. Preparing engineered erythrocytes or surface modified erythrocytes, are the current approaches to use RBCs for DDS. Surface modification of RBCs using lipid anchors holds promise for future of DDS, but currently there is not sufficient knowledge on effect of lipid (alkyl) chain size on anchoring potential. We hypothesized that increasing the lipid chain length for a phospholipid like anchoring agent will significantly improve localization on the RBC membrane. Here we synthesized three single chain phospholipid like molecules with varying lipid chain lengths. We compared the anchoring efficiency of 0, 6, and 16-carbon chains attached to a fluorophore via a linker, using confocal imaging followed by image analysis. As hypothesized, it was found that the 16-carbon chain showed highest level of anchoring to the RBC membrane compared to shorter chains. In the future we plan to test with a dual chain, to assess if the dual chain has a higher level of anchoring. With this research we intend to produce a more efficient DDS, for personalized therapy, and a step into a higher quality of health care. This was partially supported by TWD RISE GM60655.