Adhesive interactions of liposomes with supported planar bilayers on QCM as a new adhesion model

In order to investigate the molecular characteristics of carbohydrate-mediated cell interactions we introduce a model system on the basis of a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM). In this study, the adhesion of receptor-coupled liposomes as cell models to ligand containing model membranes at the quartz surface has been quantified. Thus, a glycolipid-ligand containing supported planar bilayer was transferred onto the quartz surface by a combined method of lipid self assembly (SA) and Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) technique. It could be shown that, contrary to normal liposomes, receptor-liposomes strongly adhere to the model membrane detectable by a large shift in the quartz frequency. Variation in liposome structure and their influence of adhesion could selectively be analyzed with this technique. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.