Insights into drug loading techniques with mesoporous silica nanoparticles: Optimization of operating conditions and assessment of drug stability

Mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) are promising inorganic materials for oral drug delivery due to their unique characteristics, such as tunable pore size, high surface area, adjustable surface chemistry, and favorable morphological structure. Loading drugs into MSNs is a strategy to modify the drug pharmacokinetics, protecting drugs from harsh environmental conditions, and preventing drug crystallization during storage. Choosing proper loading methods affects the drug's physicochemical properties, therapeutic efficacy, and manufacturing considerations. Therefore, the most critical issues that literature should focus on are high loading capacity and the stability of amorphous drugs during their shelf-life. This review highlights the primary loading techniques, emphasizing their strengths and weaknesses. It explains the optimization of environmental operating conditions and their effects on the loading capacity of MSNs. Furthermore, it describes the stability of drugs within MSNs after the loading process. The current and future prospects of this field are also discussed.