Abstract
The use of nanomaterials for the treatment of solid tumours is receiving increasing attention by the scientific community. Among them, mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) exhibit unique features that make them suitable nanocarriers to host, transport and protect drug molecules until the target is reached. It is possible to incorporate different targeting ligands to the outermost surface of MSNs to selectively drive the drugs to the tumour tissues. To prevent the premature release of the cargo entrapped in the mesopores, it is feasible to cap the pore entrances using stimuli-responsive nanogates. Therefore, upon exposure to internal (pH, enzymes, glutathione, etc.) or external (temperature, light, magnetic field, etc.) stimuli, the pore opening takes place and the release of the entrapped cargo occurs. These smart MSNs are capable of selectively reaching and accumulating at the target tissue and releasing the entrapped drug in a specific and controlled fashion, constituting a promising alternative to conventional chemotherapy, which is typically associated with undesired side effects. In this review, we overview the recent advances reported by the scientific community in developing MSNs for antitumor therapy. We highlight the possibility to design multifunctional nanosystems using different therapeutic approaches aimed at increasing the efficacy of the antitumor treatment.
Highlights
In recent times, nanomaterials have been used more and more in healthcare, electronics, cosmetics and other areas [1,2,3]
As far as cancer therapeutics is concerned, the most common cancer treatments are restricted to chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, involving a lot of side effects caused by a non-specific tissue distribution of anticancer agents, insufficient drug concentrations at the tumor, unmanageable toxicity, limited possibility to get information about therapeutic responses and the development of multiple drug resistance due to the repeated exposition to chemotherapeutic agents inefficient drug concentrations reaching the tumor site, intolerable cytotoxicity, limited ability to monitor therapeutic responses and development of multiple drug resistance acquired upon repeated chemotherapeutic cycles [17,18,19]
The use of targeted mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) can solve the lack of selectivity of some drugs since they can host, transport and guide the therapeutic agents selectively to the tumor. This strategy permits decreasing the high doses of cytotoxic drugs, which are needed in conventional chemotherapy, increasing therapeutic efficacy and diminishing undesired side effects
Summary
Nanomaterials have been used more and more in healthcare, electronics, cosmetics and other areas [1,2,3]. Mesoporous silica NPs (MSNs) are one of the most promising drug carriers, and they have attracted increasing attention in fields such as drug delivery, diagnostic and medical imaging and engineering due their unique properties (Figure 2) including: large surface area (~1000 m2·g−1 for MCM-41 type particles) and large pore volumes (~1 cm3·g−1) providing high loading capacity, high degree of tunability regarding size, morphology and pore diameter, biocompatibility, biodistribution, biodegradation and excretion [23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40] Another added advantage is the ease of synthesis showing a great variety of morphologies and surface functionalities using different strategies which have been reviewed elsewhere [41,42,43,44,45,46]. The recent developments on MSNs as stimuli-responsive drug delivery systems able to release therapeutic compounds once the target diseased tissues and cells are reached are overviewed
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