Particle size analyses of polydisperse liposome formulations with a novel multispectral advanced nanoparticle tracking technology

Liposomes are potent adjuvant constituents for licensed vaccines and vaccine candidates and carriers for drug delivery. Depending on the method of preparation, liposomes vary in size distribution, either forming uniform small size vesicles or a heterogeneous mixture of small to large vesicles. Importantly, differences in liposomal size have been demonstrated to induce differential immune responses. Determination of particle size distribution could therefore be crucial for the efficacy and stability of vaccine formulations. We compared the techniques of dynamic light scattering, laser diffraction, and conventional nanoparticle tracking analysis with a novel multispectral advanced nanoparticle tracking analysis (MANTA) for particle size determination of mono- and polydisperse liposomes. MANTA reported an average 146 nm size of monodisperse liposomes but showed a multimodal distribution of polydisperse liposomes with continuous sizes from 50 to 2000 nm. However, approximately 95% of particles were in the size range of 50-1500 nm and only few particles were identified in the 1500-2000 nm range for the investigated volume. Based on our results, we conclude that MANTA is the most suitable approach and can serve as stand-alone technique for particle size characterization of heterogeneous liposome samples in the 50-2000 nm size range.