Definition of "liposome" [liposome]

• An artificial microscopic vesicle consisting of an aqueous core enclosed in one or more phospholipid layers, used to convey vaccines, drugs, enzymes, or other substances to target cells or organs. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Backed by funding from the trust, they isolated the healthy version of the cystic fibrosis gene and coated it in a special fatty chemical known as a liposome."
• "Sood and co-author Gabriel Lopez-Berestein, M.D., professor in UT MD Anderson's Department of Experimental Therapeutics, have developed delivery systems that package siRNA with a fatty ball called a liposome to silence specific genes in cancer cells."
• "Preliminary experiments incubating the HeLa cells with polysilicon chips gave low yields of internalized intracellular chips (ICC) so they used lipofection (encapsulation of materials in a lipid vesicle called a liposome) to obtain higher rates of ICC-containing cells."