Assembly of single-walled carbon nanohorn supported liposome particles

Nanoparticle-supported liposomes can be a promising platform for drug delivery, vaccine development, and biomedical imaging. Single-walled carbon nanohorns are a relatively new carbon nanomaterial, and they could be used as carriers of drug and imaging reagents. Assembling lipids around carbon nanohorns would confer this nanomaterial much broader applications such as vaccine development and targeted drug delivery by embedding a target protein or immunogenic protein into the lipid bilayer structure. Here, we show the assembly of functionalized single-walled carbon nanohorns (CH₂-CH ₂-COOH_x, 100 nm) with positively charged lipids through a freeze and thaw cycle. The assembled complex particles can be readily separated from individual nanohorns or liposomes under specific centrifugation conditions. The results from transmission electronic microscopy, flow cytometry through nitrobenzoxadiazole labeled lipids, and zeta potential analysis clearly show that the nanohorns are encapsulated by liposomes with a median size of ca. 120 nm.