Fabrication of badminton-like porous silica carriers and their application in drug release

Current research on silica-based drug delivery systems (DDS) mainly focuses on spherical silica nanocarriers, but asymmetric silica carriers display improving uptake efficiency. In this paper, asymmetric mesoporous silica (AMS) nanocarriers were designed and prepared by asymmetric modification. The AMS sample presents badminton-like structure with head of about 250 nm and tail length of 60–70 nm. Compared with spherical carriers, the AMS carriers displayed higher cell uptake efficiency. When doxorubicin (DOX) was loaded, hyaluronic acid (HA) molecules were used to block the loaded-drug. HA layer was easily degraded by endogenous hyaluronidase (HAase) or acidic environment. The obtained DOX@AMS-HA displayed pH/enzyme-triggered drug release.