Chemotherapy is an important anti-tumor treatment in clinic to date, however, the effectiveness of traditional chemotherapy is limited by its poor selectivity, high systemic toxicity, and multidrug resistance. In recent years, mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) have become exciting drug delivery systems (DDS) due to their unique advantages, such as easy large-scale production, adjustable uniform pore size, large surface area and pore volumes. While mesoporous silica-based DDS can improve chemotherapy to a certain extent, when used in combination with other cancer therapies MSN based chemotherapy exhibits a synergistic effect, greatly improving therapeutic outcomes. In this review, we discuss the applications of MSN DDS for a diverse range of chemotherapeutic combination anti-tumor therapies, including phototherapy, gene therapy, immunotherapy and other less common modalities. Furthermore, we focus on the characteristics of each nanomaterial and the synergistic advantages of the combination therapies. Lastly, we examine the challenges and future prospects of MSN based chemotherapeutic combination therapies.

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To simplify the preparation of dendritic materials, host–guest molecular recognition and self‐assembly are utilized to form a supramolecular dendritic gene vector (DNCVP). DNCVP is constructed from an amino dendron‐conjugated naphthol, viologen containing pH‐sensitive hydrazone‐bond‐linked PEG, and CB[8] with a molar ratio of 1:1:1. The pH‐ and reducing‐sensitivity of DNCVP is verified, and the stimuli‐responsive capacity enables the vector tumor targeting gene delivery ability. Owing to the protection of surface PEG, the supramolecular engineering endows the delivery vector with low cytotoxicity and good biocompatibility that are confirmed by the MTT assay. The excellent delivery ability of genes is investigated by in vitro transfection of pEGFP, pGL3, and silencing of siGAPDH. In vivo studies demonstrate promoted tumor accumulation of genes mediated by the dual‐responsive DNCVP and the transfection efficiency at the tumor site is greatly improved benefiting from the dynamic nature of noncovalent interactions. This study reveals DNCVP is a promising supramolecular dendritic gene delivery vector, providing a sophisticated strategy for precise gene therapy.