Versatile Mesoporous Nanoparticles for Cell Applications.

Abstract

Mesoporous silica nanostructures are emerging as a promising platform able to deal with challenges of many different applications in fields such as biomedicine and nanotechnology. The versatile physical and functional properties of these materials like high specific surface area, ordered porosity, chemical stability under temperature and pH variations, and biocompatible performance, offers new approaches to many biomedical applications ranging from drug delivery systems to biosensing, cell applications and tissue engineering. Their morphology, size and textural properties can be easily tailored by means of chemical control, giving rise to a variety of nanostructures with hexagonal (SBA15, MCM41) or cubic (SBA16) arrangement of channels and pore size ranging from 1.3 to 10 nm. Based on the versatility of their silane surface, a plethora of hybrid mesoporous matrices can be prepared incorporating new functionalities like contrast enhancement for magnetic resonance imaging, magnetic/plasmonic hyperthermia, drug delivery or cell applications by the simple grafting of superparamagnetic metal oxides (Fe₃O₄, transition metal ferrites) nanoparticles, noble metal (Au, Ag) nanoparticles, fluorescent moieties (fluorescein, rhodamine) or biological agents (mAb, mRNA, etc). The goal of this work is to present the development, by a facile soft template method, of size tailored mesoporous silica nanospheres from 20 to 350 nm (by means of chemical control), and highlight its versatility for surface grafting (with rhodamine and polydopamine) and their biological compatibility and efficient uptake by cultured HeLa cells. The combined, physicochemical and biological, properties indicate that MSNs are good candidates for cell tagging, gene transfer or targeted therapies.