Noncovalent Surface Locking of Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles for Exceptionally High Hydrophobic Drug Loading and Enhanced Colloidal Stability.

Advances in water-insoluble drug delivery systems are limited by selective delivery, loading capacity, and colloidal and encapsulation stability. We have developed a simple and robust hydrophobic-drug delivery platform with different types of hydrophobic chemotherapeutic agents using a noncovalent gatekeeper's technique with mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs). The unmodified pores offer a large volume of drug loading capacity, and the loaded drug is stably encapsulated until it enters the cancer cells owing to the noncovalently bound polymer gatekeeper.