Multifunctional Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles for Cancer Therapy and Imaging

Background: Cancer is a widespread disease and has a high mortality rate. Popular conventional treatment encompasses chemotherapy, radiation and surgical resection. However, these treatments impart lots of toxicity problems to the patients mostly due to their non-selectiveness nature, which invokes drug resistances and severe side-effects. Objectives: In this regard, nanotechnology has claimed to be a smart technology that provides the system with the ability to target drugs to the specific sites. With the use of nanotechnology, various nanomaterials that are widely used as a drug delivery vehicle are created for biomedical applications. Amongst variously diversified nanovehicles, mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) have attracted enormous attention due to their structural characteristics, great surface areas, tunable pore diameters, good thermal and chemical stability, excellent biocompatibility along with ease of surface modification. Furthermore, the drug release from MSNs can be tailored through various stimuli response gatekeeper systems. The ordered structure of MSNs is extremely suitable for loading of the high amount of drug molecules with controlled delivery for targeting the cancer tissues via enhanced permeability and retention effect or further with surface modification, it can also be actively targeted by various ligands. Methods: The review article emphases the common synthetic methods and current advancement of MSNs usages for stimuli response drug delivery, immunotherapy as well as the theranostic ability for cancer. Conclusion: Although MSNs are becoming the promising tool for more efficient and safer cancer therapy, however, additional translational studies are required to explore its multifunctional ability in a clinical setting.