Drug Delivery
The large surface area of the pores allows the particles to be filled with a drug or a cytotoxin. Like a Trojan Horse, the particles will be taken up by certain biological cells though endocytosis, depending on what chemicals are attached to the outside of the spheres. Some types of cancer cells will take up more of the particles than healthy cells will, giving researchers hope that MCM-41 will one day be used to treat certain types of cancer.
Ordered mesoporous silica (e.g. SBA-15, TUD-1, HMM-33, and FSM-16) also show potential to boost the in vitro and in vivo dissolution of poorly water soluble drugs. Many drug-candidates coming from drug discovery suffer from a poor water solubility. An insufficient dissolution of these hydrophobic drugs in the gastrointestinal fluids strongly limits the oral bioavailability. One example is itraconazole which is an antimycoticum known for its poor aqueous solubility. Upon introduction of itraconazole-on-SBA-15 formulation in simulated gastrointestinal fluids, a supersaturated solution is obtained giving rise to enhanced transepithelial intestinal transport. Also the efficient uptake into the systemic circulation of SBA-15 formulated itraconazole has been demonstrated in vivo (rabbits and dogs). This approach based on SBA-15 yields stable formulations and can be used for a wide variety of poorly water soluble compounds.
Read more about this topic: Mesoporous Silica
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