Desarrollo de un sistema de nanoencapsulación terapéutico basado en partículas de sílice y nanotubos de carbono

Abstract

The clinical failure of many potentially effective therapies is often not due to the lack of effectiveness of the therapy, but rather to deficiencies in the cellular and subcellular targeting of the delivery system. Nanotechnology gives us the opportunity to develop new drug nanocarrier systems that could release the therapy specifically on demand at the targeted location, thus reducing the side effects and boosting the efficacy of the drug. In our laboratory we have developed a multi-structured nano-carrier system based on mesoporous silica particles coated with biodegradable carbon nanotubes. These particles are able to i) enter cells by receptor mediated endocytosis, ii) escape the endo-lysosomal membranes without showing toxicity and iii) are degraded by cell producing no detectable toxicity. As a proof-of-concept, to investigate the efficiency of the system in drug delivery we have encapsulated fluorescent dyes inside mesoporous silica particles and have quantified dye release in different media. While the carbon nanotube coating endows the particles with the ability to escape the endo-lysosomal membranes, our studies also demonstrate the importance of the different polymeric coatings of the silica particles in delivery. These data indicate how controlling the nature of the coating of these systems we can determine the time and subcellular targeting of the therapeutic release in vivo.