Abstract

Loaded erythrocytes, as drug carrier system, has tremendous potential to carry outside specificity and sustained release of drug. Thereby, enhancing therapeutic index and minimize the dose and adverse effects as well as improvement patient compliance. In the present paper, erythrocytes loaded Ribavirin with the aim to benefit the reticulo endothelial system targeting potential of the carrier cells. Endocytosis technique was used for Ribavirin loading in erythrocytes and the entire loading procedure was evaluated and validated. The in-vitro release of carrier erythrocytes was characterized, as well as the hematological indices, osmotic fragility and SEM analysis. The maximum loaded amount and entrapment efficiency were found to be 9.58 ± 0.045 mg and 38.3% at 25mg/ml of Ribavirin concentration after 60 minutes incubation time at 37oC with 88.42% cell recovery. The in-vitro Ribavirin release was found to obey Higuchi diffusion kinetics. Hematological parameters of Ribavirin loaded erythrocytes were significantly differ from native erythrocytes at (p≤ 0.01). It was found that the mean corpuscular volume value was increased, while the mean corpuscular hemoglobin and the mean corpuscular hemoglobin content values were decreased. Also, the osmotic fragility behaviors of Ribavirin loaded erythrocytes were significantly decreased at (p≤ 0.001). The scanning electron microscope of Ribavirin loaded erythrocytes show obvious changes in the cell surface and morphology with rough cell surface and small lesions. The highly changed erythrocyte shape and morphology being one of the main determinants in erythrocytes disappearance kinetics in circulation, can be potentially beneficial in terms of successful cell targeting to the reticulo endothelial system which in turn leads to the improved Ribavirin effects on RES-mediated immune responses. Keywords: Endocytosis, erythrocytes, osmotic fragility and scanning electron microscope

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