Technical development for the characterization of red blood cells after an hypotonic-dialysis based drug encapsulation process

Red blood cells (RBC) represent an attractive and unique approach as a carrier for various therapeutic agents. Their natural properties such as their biocompatibility, long circulation lifespan, membrane shielding properties allowing to reduce the toxicity and extend the half-life of the molecule encapsulated make them good models for drug carrier. Erytech Pharma, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, has developed the ERYCAPS® platform enabling the encapsulation of molecules inside RBC using a proprietary hypotonic loading process. Maintaining RBCs integrity and lifespan is important for the utility of RBCs as drug carriers/bioreactors and can be a challenging aspect of drug encapsulation. The work of this thesis is to determine the impact of the ERYCAPS® encapsulation process and the impact of the encapsulated molecule on the integrity and physiology of RBC. Several RBC parameters are evaluated such as their proteomic and metabolomic profile, some senescence markers and their hemorheological, hematological and morphological properties. The impact of RBC storage after encapsulation process is also assessed on some of these parameters.