Synthesis of mesoporous silica nanocarrier via chitooligosaccharide template using for irinotecan delivery

In this study, chitooligosaccharide (CHO) was used as a template to synthesis of 50 nm mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) with high specific surface area and pore volume. The MSNs nanopaticles have been characterized by SEM, TEM, DLS, FTIR, TGA, XRD and XPS spectrometry. The CHO templated MSNs nanoparticles featured with very high specific surface area (1443.7 m 2 g −1 ) and pore volume (2.171 cm 3 g −1 ). The MSNs surface was further modified by the chitosan (CHI) layer and the folic acid (FA). Under the optimized conditions, the anticancer drug CPT-11 has a loading efficiency of 378 mg/g and the drug release efficiency is 40.8 % in 24 h. In vitro tests on the prepared MSNs-CHI-FA loaded with CPT-11 against human breast cancer cells indicated that the nano-formulation with drug concentration of 20 μg/mL successfully enhanced folate receptor-mediated endocytosis by the cellular uptake and significantly improved CPT-11 inhibitory against the cancer cells to 58.1 %