Today, cancer represents one of the main causes of death worldwide, making it a formidable challenge for all scientific areas that seek new therapeutic approaches for its cure. As a therapeutic approach, radiotherapy, widely used in treating various types of tumors, acts by not discriminating healthy cells from tumor cells. Seeking to minimize these effects, nanostructured carriers of radioisotopes have been studied with the aim of improving the specificity of action of ionizing radiation, delivering and retaining adequate amounts of radioactive isotopes within tumor cells, leading them to death. In the present work, silica nanoparticles were prepared in order to evaluate their capacity to act as a nanocarrier of the 159 Gd-DTPA-BMA radioactive complex, which can selectively deliver high radiation doses to tumors. Furthermore, this formulation seeks to prevent nontarget tissues from receiving excessive amounts of radiation, acting as a new potential alternative to conventional radiotherapy, in which a large dose of radiation is delivered to nontarget tissues, causing harm to healthy surrounding tissues.

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Nanomaterials such as pH-responsive polymers are promising for targeted drug delivery systems, due to the difference in pH between tumor and healthy regions. However, there is a significant concern about the application of these materials in this field due to their low mechanical resistance, which can be attenuated by combining these polymers with mechanically resistant inorganic materials such as mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) and hydroxyapatite (HA). Mesoporous silica has interesting properties such as high surface area and hydroxyapatite has been widely studied to aid in bone regeneration, providing special properties adding multifunctionality to the system. Furthermore, fields of medicine involving luminescent elements such as rare earth elements are an interesting option in cancer treatment. The present work aims to obtain a pH-sensitive hybrid system based on silica and hydroxyapatite with photoluminescent and magnetic properties. The nanocomposites were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), nitrogen adsorption methods, CHN elemental analysis, Zeta Potential, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), vibrational sample magnetometry (VSM), and photoluminescence analysis. Incorporation and release studies of the antitumor drug doxorubicin were performed to evaluate the potential use of these systems in targeted drug delivery. The results showed the luminescent and magnetic properties of the materials and showed suitable characteristics for application in the release of pH-sensitive drugs.

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