Exploring the physicochemical interactions and loading strategies of mesoporous silicon dioxide nanoparticles for drug delivery

Mesoporous silica nanoparticles play an important role in drug delivery due to their high surface area, porous structure, tunable pore size, chemical stability and functionalization capability. Such properties make them a good candidate for drug encapsulation. However, molecular binding is another parameter that govern drug loading apart of pores’ structure and size. There is a lack of comprehensive reviews on that topic nowadays. This paper overviews the latest publications on the physicochemical aspects of the interaction of mesoporous silica nanoparticles with drugs. The review is focused primarily on a such parameters of the intermolecular binding between a drug and silica nanoparticle as a binding constant, enthalpy and entropy changes and experimental methods with the emphasis on the principles of thermodynamic parameters characterization. Such information would be very important for the development and optimization of drug delivery strategies based on mesoporous silica nanoparticles.