Noncovalent Polymer-Gatekeeper in Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles as a Targeted Drug Delivery Platform

Abstract

Nanoscopic delivery vehicles capable of encapsulating drug molecules and releasing them in response to external stimuli are of great interest due to implications in therapeutic applications. Micellar assemblies are promising scaffolds to overcome many of the problems faced with traditional chemotherapies because of their capacity for non-covalent, hydrophobic guest molecule binding. However, the stability of encapsulation with such self-assembled systems is limited during blood circulation because of a requisite concentration for assembly formation and low encapsulation stability. Thus, deliberate molecular design for stable encapsulation, targeting and triggered release is required. For this purpose, we have developed a facile synthetic method for highly stable, polymer-caged hollow nanoparticles using a simple intra/inter-chain crosslinking reaction. We show a simple method for the preparation of biocompatible nanovehicles that provides the ability to encapsulate hydrophobic or hydrophilic drug molecules. We can control the size of the nano-carriers and release kinetics depending on crosslinking in responsive to stimuli. Nano-carriers showed great stability to encapsulate drug molecules and drugs were only released inside cell. In addition, we can use surface modified nano-carriers for target delivery system. Hence, the stimuli responsive nano-carrier formation using self-crosslinking polymers and the corresponding method of surface modification are a promising platform for creating polymer nanogels for a range of biomedical applications, from drug delivery to biosensing.