Chapter 23 - Mesoporous silica nanoparticles: a promising multifunctional drug delivery system

Abstract

Drugs with poor solubility and specificity need higher doses of administration to achieve the optimum therapeutic concentration. As a result, such drugs possess higher adverse drug reactions especially cytotoxic drugs or drugs with narrow therapeutic index. Mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNPs) have gained great interest of researchers for their potential biomedical applications due to their unique physicochemical properties, biocompatibility, and low toxicity. MSNPs are mesoporous systems made up of silica with particle size 30–300 nm and can be tailored to facilitate endocytosis by living cells with minimum cytotoxicity and to achieve different research goals. High surface area (800 m2/gm) and large pore volume (0.9 cm3/gm) of MSNPs allow high drug loading. Other unique properties of MSNPs, such as tunable pore size and good thermal and chemical stability, high surface area, and porous volume make it an excellent carrier for different therapeutic agents with advantages of enhanced therapeutic efficacy, improved safety, and controlled release behavior. Synthesis of MSNPs is simple, cost-effective, and parameters of synthesis can be controlled according to necessity. MSNPs have many applications in medicine, biosensors, and imaging. This chapter addresses the synthesis, characterization, advantages, as well as applications of MSNPs.