Enzyme responsive drug delivery system based on mesoporous silica nanoparticles for tumor therapy in vivo

To reduce the toxic side effects of traditional chemotherapeutics in vivo , we designed and constructed a biocompatible, matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) responsive drug delivery system based on mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs). MMPs substrate peptide containing PLGLAR (sensitive to MMPs) was immobilized onto the surfaces of amino-functionalized MSNs via an amidation reaction, serving as MMPs sensitive intermediate linker. Bovine serum albumin was then covalently coupled to linker as end-cap for sealing the mesopores of MSNs. Lactobionic acid was further conjugated to the system as targeting motif. Doxorubicin hydrochloride was used as the model anticancer drug in this study. A series of characterizations revealed that the system was successfully constructed. The peptide-functionalized MSNs system demonstrated relatively high sensitivity to MMPs for triggering drug delivery, which was potentially important for tumor therapy since the tumor’s microenvironment overexpre...

Yun Liu, Xingwei Ding, Jinghua Li, Zhong Luo, Yan Hu, Junjie Liu, Liangliang Dai, Jun Zhou, Changjun Hou and Kaiyong Cai

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