Abstract
Despite the fact that the methods based on the osmotic properties of the cells are the most widely used for loading of drugs in human and animal erythrocytes, data related to the osmotic properties of erythrocytes derived from animal blood are scarce. This work was performed with an aim to investigate the possibility of use the flow cytometry as a tool for determination the osmotic behaviour of porcine and bovine erythrocytes, and thus facilitate the engineering of erythrocytes from animal blood to be drug carriers. The method of flow cytometry successfully provided the information about bovine and porcine erythrocyte osmotic fragility, and made the initial steps in assessment of erythrocyte shape in a large number of erythrocytes. Although this method is not able to confirm the swelling of pig erythrocytes, it indicated to the differences in pig erythrocytes that had basic hematological parameters inside and outside the reference values. In order to apply/use the porcine and bovine erythrocytes as drug carriers, the method of flow cytometry, confirming the presence of osmotically different fractions of red blood cells, indicated that various amounts of the encapsulated drug in porcine and bovine erythrocytes can be expected.
Highlights
Despite the fact that the methods based on the osmotic properties of the cells are the most widely used for loading of drugs in human and animal erythrocytes, data related to the osmotic properties of erythrocytes derived from animal blood are scarce
The articles published by Matsuzawa and Ikarashi [21], Brzezińska-Slebodzińska [22] and Johnstone and co-workers [23] are in agreement with our findings which show that bovine erythrocytes exhibit higher resistance to osmotic lysis than porcine erythrocytes
The mechanical stress caused by shear flow in flow cytometer could not be neglected, the demonstrated equal mechanical fragility index (MFI) for bovine and porcine erythrocytes indicated that the obtained differences in forward scatter (FSC)/SSC diagrams of erythrocytes incubated in same hypotonic buffer really reflected their different osmotic properties
Summary
Despite the fact that the methods based on the osmotic properties of the cells are the most widely used for loading of drugs in human and animal erythrocytes, data related to the osmotic properties of erythrocytes derived from animal blood are scarce. This work was performed with an aim to investigate the possibility of use the flow cytometry as a tool for determination the osmotic behaviour of porcine and bovine erythrocytes, and facilitate the engineering of erythrocytes from animal blood to be drug carriers.
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