Inorganic Porous Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery in Antitumoral Therapy.

ABSTRACT

The use of nanoparticles in oncology to deliver chemotherapeutic agents has received considerable attention in the last decades due to their tendency to be passively accumulated in solid tumors. Besides this remarkable property, the surface of these nanocarriers can be decorated with targeting moieties capable to recognize malignant cells which lead to selective nanoparticle uptake mainly in the diseased cells, without affecting the healthy ones. Among the different nanocarriers which have been developed with this purpose, inorganic porous nanomaterials constitute some of the most interesting due to their unique properties such as excellent cargo capacity, high biocompatibility and chemical, thermal and mechanical robustness, among others. Additionally, these materials can be engineered to present an exquisite control in the drug release behavior placing stimuli-responsive pore-blockers or sensitive hybrid coats on their surface. Herein, the recent advances developed in the use of porous inorganic nanomedicines will be described in order to provide an overview of their huge potential in the look out of an efficient and safe therapy against this complex disease. Porous inorganic nanoparticles have been designed to be accumulated in tumoral tissues; once there to recognize the target cell and finally, to release their payload in a controlled manner.