Swellable hollow periodic mesoporous organosilica capsules with ultrahigh loading capacity for hydrophobic drugs

As a new kind of drug carrier, practical applications of hollow periodic mesoporous organosilica (HPMO) have been greatly limited by their low loading capacity for hydrophobic drugs. In this work, we demon-strated the preparation of HPMO capsules with tunable shell thickness by using 1,2-bis(triethoxysilyl) ethane as the precursor. The capsules with thin shells and thus low Young's modulus showed excellent swellability to organic solvents containing hydrophobic drugs. As a result, hydrophobic drugs, i.e., pacli-taxel (PTX) could be loaded into the hollow interior of the HPMO capsules with 4 nm shell at an efficiency of ca. 120 %. The as-prepared PTX-loaded HPMO capsules were dispersible in aqueous media and showed improved performance in killing cancer cells compared to free PTX.(c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

In this study, we successfully prepared HPMO capsules with tunable shell thickness and efficiently loaded hydrophobic drug PTX into the capsules. The prepared capsules exhibited excellent swellability and improved performance in killing cancer cells.