“Smart Mesoporous Silica-based Devices for Drug Targeting”

The discovery of ordered mesoporous silica opened the possibility of new developments in several fields of chemistry such as host-guest synthesis of nanostructured materials, in optics, in drug delivery and targeting, etc.. Our research group synthesized a typology of functional mesoporous silica, obtained through co-condensation, it has been conjugated to folic acid, a receptor specific non-immunogenic ligand, being able at the same time to accommodate a drug. We have shown as not-functionalized MSNs, synthesized using a PEG surfactant-based interfacial synthesis procedure, do not enter cells, while a highly specific, receptor mediated, cellular internalization of folic acid (FOL) grafted MSNs (MSN-FOL), occurs exclusively in folate receptor (FR) expressing cells. Finally, cisplatin (Cp) loaded MSN-FOL were tested on cancerous FR-positive (HeLa) or normal FR-negative (HEK293) cells. A strong growth arrest was observed only in HeLa cells treated with MSN-FOL-Cp. The results presented here show that our mesoporous nanoparticles do not enter cells unless opportunely functionalized, suggesting that they could represent a promising vehicle for drug targeting applications.