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).