Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles for Co-Delivery of Drugs and Nucleic Acids in Oncology: A Review

Abstract

Mesoporous silica nanoparticles have attracted much attention in recent years as drug and gene delivery systems for biomedical applications. Among their most beneficial features for biomedicine, we can highlight their biocompatibility and their outstanding textural properties, which provide a great loading capacity for many types of cargos. In the context of cancer nanomedicine, combination therapy and gene transfection/silencing have recently been highlighted as two of its most promising fields. In this review, we aim to provide an overview of the different small molecule drug-nucleic acid co-delivery combinations that have been developed using mesoporous silica nanoparticles as carriers. By carefully selecting the chemotherapeutic drug and nucleic acid cargos to be co-delivered by mesoporous silica nanoparticles, different therapeutic goals can be achieved by overcoming resistance mechanisms, combining different cytotoxic mechanisms, or providing an additional antiangiogenic effect. The examples here presented highlight the great promise of this type of strategies for the development of future therapeutics.

Delivery of Natural Agents by Means of Mesoporous Silica Nanospheres as a Promising Anticancer Strategy

“…Below, we highlight the common and promising families that could be favored for drug delivery and medical applications. Numerous interesting review articles have been published on MSN synthesis strategies and applications that we recommend for further reading [10,22,32,73,[75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83]. Note: The above-mentioned characteristics of these materials can be controlled and can vary (more or less) from these values.…”

Nanoparticles Coated with Cell Membranes for Biomedical Applications

“…In this sense, various nanomaterials have been explored in medical research, giving rise to a new area in science, nanomedicine [ 2 , 3 , 4 ]. Among them, nanoparticles (NPs) for drug delivery offer significant advantages in terms of efficacy and safety in comparison with certain conventional therapies [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ].…”

Inorganic and Polymeric Nanoparticles for Human Viral and Bacterial Infections Prevention and Treatment

“…Nanomedicine is a multidisciplinary field that is based on the application of nanotechnology for medical purposes and can be defined as the use of nanomaterials for diagnosis, monitoring, control, prevention, and treatment of diseases [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ] ( Figure 1 ). Nanomedicine intends to change the clinical practice and introduce novel medicines for both diagnosis and treatment, which can: (1) integrate effective molecules that otherwise could not be used due to their intrinsic high toxicity, (2) exploit multiple mechanisms of action, (3) maximize efficacy whilst dose and toxicity are reduced, and (4) provide drug targeting, controlled and site-specific release [ 7 , 11 , 13 ]. One of the most used nanomaterials in nanomedicine are nanoparticles, nano-scale particles that show highly tunable physical and optical properties and the capacity to form a wide library of compounds [ 13 ].…”