Controlled release and intracellular protein delivery from mesoporous silica nanoparticles

Abstract

Protein therapeutics are promising candidates for disease treatment due to their high specificity and minimal adverse side effects; however, targeted protein delivery to specific sites has proven challenging. Mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) have demonstrated to be ideal candidates for this application, given their high loading capacity, biocompatibility, and ability to protect host molecules from degradation. These materials exhibit tunable pore sizes, shapes and volumes, and surfaces which can be easily functionalized. This serves to control the movement of molecules in and out of the pores, thus entrapping guest molecules until a specific stimulus triggers release. In this review, we will cover the benefits of using MSN as protein therapeutic carriers, demonstrating that there is great diversity in the ways MSN can be used to service proteins. Methods for controlling the physical dimensions of pores via synthetic conditions, applications of therapeutic protein loaded MSN materials in cancer therapies, delivering protein loaded MSN materials to plant cells using biolistic methods, and common stimuli‐responsive functionalities will be discussed. New and exciting strategies for controlled release and manipulation of proteins are also covered in this review. While research in this area has advanced substantially, we conclude this review with future challenges to be tackled by the scientific community.

Multidisciplinary Role of Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles in Brain Regeneration and Cancers: From Crossing the Blood–Brain Barrier to Treatment

“…They are capable of protecting the host and guest molecules from degradation and can regulate their movement (guests) in and out of the pores. The guest molecules remain entrapped until a specific stimulus triggers their release . The silicon oxide matrix remains stable under the biological environment, and is composed of a hexagonal array with several mesopores.…”

Biocompatibility assessment of functionalized magnetic mesoporous silica nanoparticles in human HepaRG cells

“…Silanol groups present on the surface of MSNs can be functionalized with various ligands, which could be one way of controlling nanoparticle (NP) biodistribution and the design of specific targeted delivery systems (Bouchoucha et al 2016;Li et al 2016). MSNs have been widely studied for their capability to load and release various drugs (Vallet-Reg ı, Balas, and Arcos 2007; Deodhar, Adams, and Trewyn 2017). More specifically, by creating a core-shell structure composed of an Fe 3 O 4 core surrounded by a mesoporous silica shell, magnetic properties have been added to MSNs (Rho et al 2014;Nyalosaso et al 2016).…”

Sensitization of Cancer Cells via Non-Viral Delivery of Apoptosis Inducing Proteins Using a Cationic Bolaamphiphile

“…However, additional work is required to demonstrate the versatility of this system with proteins of different physical properties. Other systems such as mesoporous silica nanoparticles have limitations related to size of the cargo protein . However, the bolaamphiphile based protein delivery system has been proven to deliver proteins of different physical characteristics .…”