One-pot synthesis of mesoporous silica nanocarriers with tunable particle sizes and pendent carboxylic groups for cisplatin delivery.

Mesoporous silica nanocarriers with tunable particle sizes and different loadings of pendent carboxylic groups were successfully prepared by a straightforward and reproducible strategy, in which carboxyethylsilanetriol sodium salt was co-condensed with tetraethoxyorthosilicate to introduce the carboxylic groups. The key in this strategy was to separate the synthesis process into two steps of the nuclei formation and particle growth. The uniform particle size and ordered structure of the synthesized nanocarriers were manifested by several techniques such as XRD, TEM, SEM, and BET. DLS measurement illustrated that nanocarriers could be well suspended in aqueous solution. The integration and content tunability of the carboxylic groups within mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) were verified by FT-IR and (29)Si NMR. The inherent carboxylic units on the obtained carboxylic group modified MSNs (MSNs-C) effectively enhanced the capture and tailored the release properties of the anticancer drug of cisplatin. The accumulation of drug in the HeLa cells was greatly enhanced due to the highly efficient platinum uptake efficiency transported by the synthesized nanocarriers. The drug encapsulated in the MSNs-C exhibited a higher antitumor activity than free cisplatin against both MCF-7 and HeLa cells.