Silica nanoparticles

Mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNP) with high surface area and channels with porous have gained increasing attention in the past decades. Besides their well-developed surface chemistry, silica materials have several advantages including safety, biodegradability, and biocompatibility which make them suitable for efficient drug delivery platforms and siRNA carriers (Y. Wang et al., 2015). Xiaet al . (Xia et al., 2009) showed that PEI-coated MSNPs exhibited high cellular uptake (up to 70%) and high binding efficiency to DNA and siRNA. They also reported that the cytotoxicity and delivery efficiency can be modified by adjusting PEI chain length. They found that MSNPs which are coated with PEI polymers of low molecular weight enhance the delivery of paclitaxel (an anticancer drug) to pancreatic cancer cells (PANC-1).