Multifunctional mesoporous silica nanoparticles for cancer-targeted, controlled drug delivery and imaging

Abstract

Ordered mesoporous silica materials exhibit potential features to be used as multifunctional nanostructured drug delivery systems due to their biocompatibility, as well as to their textural and structural properties. Moreover, combining mesoporous silica nanoparticles and 64Cu becomes this system promising as theranostic device for early stage cancers since radioisotope carriers could be able to act in the treatment and imaging diagnosis simultaneously. In this paper, a multifunctional nanotheranostic system based on MCM-41 was prepared through post-synthesis functionalization of mesoporous silica MCM-41 with the tumor-homing peptide CREKA and DTPA, a ligand for copper ions. The obtained material was characterized by different techniques in order to investigate its physical-chemical properties. Additionally, the nanoparticles were loaded with the clinically approved anticancer drug methotrexate and the drug release kinetics profile was investigated. As a proof-of-concept, we also demonstrated successful activation of copper ions in a nuclear reactor to the radionuclide 64Cu. Besides, cell viability assays were conducted to prove the potential of the nanoparticles to be used for in vivo studies and to show that they do not affect the pharmacological action of MTX. Taken together, we believe that the multifunctional silica-based theranostic system could serve as a platform for cancer-targeted, controlled drug delivery and PET imaging to be applied in cancer therapy.