Liposomes are the most attractive lipid vesicles for targeted drug
delivery in nanomedicine, behaving also as cell models in biophotonics
research. The characterization of the micro-mechanical properties of
drug carriers is an important issue and many analytical techniques are
employed, as, for example, optical tweezers and atomic force microscopy.
In this work, polyol hyperbranched polymers (HBPs) have been employed
along with liposomes for the preparation of new chimeric advanced drug
delivery nanosystems (Chi-aDDnSs). Aliphatic polyester HBPs with three
different pseudogenerations G2, G3 and G4 with 16, 32, and 64 peripheral
hydroxyl groups, respectively, have been incorporated in liposomal
formulation. The atomic force microscopy (AFM) technique was used for
the comparative study of the morphology and the mechanical properties of
Chi-aDDnSs and conventional DDnS. The effects of both the HBPs
architecture and the polyesters pseudogeneration number in the stability
and the stiffness of chi-aDDnSs were examined. From the force-distance
curves of AFM spectroscopy, the Young’s modulus was calculated
