Multi- and unilamellar liposomal encapsulation of ciprofloxacin as ways to modify its phototoxicity and photodegradation.

Liposomes are vesicular preparations that improve bioavailability of many pharmaceuticals, used even in ocular therapy. In addition, it is well documented that vesicular carriers could affect the photodegradation of molecules encapsulated inside, which is especially important for drugs that may exhibit phototoxicity when they are applied topically on sensitive light-exposed tissues. In this study, we investigated the effect of ciprofloxacin encapsulation into liposomes on its photodegradation, phototoxicity and photogenotoxicity in vitro at the concentration ranges applied in ophthalmology. We tested two variants of liposomes: large unilamellar vesicles (LUV) and multilamellar vesicles (MLV) in comparison to antibiotic solutions without phospholipids (CPX). On the basis of our research, the kinetics of ciprofloxacin photolysis was the fastest in formulations with vesicles with low drug-to-lipid ratio. Depending on vesicles type (drug-to-lipid ratio, MLV or LUV) and time of irradiation different degradants were produced. We proposed structures of the novel ciprofloxacin photolysis products characteristic for vesicles. We did not notice any photoprotective effect of application of ciprofloxacin encapsulation into liposomes, but it significantly affected the photodegradation product profile of the drug and the Photo-Irritation-Factor of the vesicular preparations. In the MTT and micronucleus assays impact of encapsulation was not as clearly visible.