Silica nanoparticles developed by Indian Scientists can help design better drug delivery systems
Indian researchers have developed silica nanoparticles with pores tuned to absorb hydrophobic drugs with more stable surfaces and effective absorption properties that can improve drug delivery systems. Drug delivery systems (DDS) are new-age tools aimed to solve the problems of conventional therapy. With the advent of drug delivery systems, it is now possible to deliver a therapeutic agent at a specific site in the body where it is needed at the exact dose required. This is expected to avoid the side effects of systemic high drug dose that is generally administered. Surface functionalized mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) are widely used DDS as they have porous structure (pore sizes can be varied from 2 nm to 20 nm). However, the current routes adopted to complete the surface functionalization of the outer surface first and then load the drug leads to much lower drug loading as the pores get closed by the molecules used for outer surface functionalization. In a recent paper p...