Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
drug diffusion kinetics (Tasciotti et al. 2008; Van Speybroeck et al. 2009). In
addition, functional materials, such as magnetic nanoparticles, luminescent
materials, and polymers, can be combined with mesoporous silica to form
functional mesoporous silica composites, which induce mesoporous silica
composites as multifunctional platforms to realize the targeted controlled
drug delivery or imaging (Yang et al. 2012). Therefore, since the report on
MCM-41 mesoporous silica for drug delivery by Vallet-Regí and colleagues
in 2001, mesoporous silica nanoparticles have been considered to be excel-
lent candidates as carriers for drug delivery (Manzano and Vallet- Regí 2010;
Vivero-Escoto et al. 2010; Tang et al. 2012).
Recently, great endeavors have been made in the structure design and
functional optimization to advance the development of mesoporous silica-
based drug-delivery systems (Li et al. 2012). Meanwhile, the biological effects
of mesoporous silica nanoparticles at different levels from molecule, cell,
and blood to organ/tissue, involving cytotoxicity, biodegradability, blood
compatibility, biodistribution, and excretion have also become current hot
research topics in the field of mesoporous silica nanoparticles for biomedi-
cine (He, Zhang, et al. 2009; He, Zhang, Shi, et al. 2010; He, Shi, et al. 2010; He
et al. 2011). To date, various functional mesoporous silica composites with
different structures have been developed, such as embedding of functional
materials in mesoporous channels, the core-shell structure, and function-
alization on the surface of mesoporous silica (Lian et al. 2009; Chang et al.
2010; Rosenholm, Zhang, et al. 2011). Actually, design of different structured
functional mesoporous silica composites is based on their applications. It
has been demonstrated that the core-shell structured functional mesopo-
rous silica nanoparticles can combine new functions in the platform with-
out blocking the mesoporous channels. Therefore, the core-shell structured
functional mesoporous silica nanoparticles are desirable for drug delivery
and has been one of the most active research topics on the applications of
mesoporous silica nanoparticles. In this chapter, we will highlight the recent
studies on functional mesoporous silica nanoparticles with a core-shell
structure for controllable drug delivery.
3.2 Functional Hollow Mesoporous Silica
Nanoparticles for Controllable Drug Delivery
It has been accepted that mesoporous silica nanoparticles are one of the most
excellent candidates as carriers for drug delivery (Manzano and Vallet- Regí
2010; Vivero-Escoto et al. 2010; Tang et al. 2012). Compared to conventional
mesoporous silica nanoparticles, hollow mesoporous silica (HMS) nanopar-
ticles, also called silica nanoparticles with hollow core-mesoporous shell
structure, possess much higher drug-loading capacity due to the hollow
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