Nanostructuring materials can radically change their properties. Two interesting examples highlighted here are nanoscale porosity inducing biodegradability, and nanoscale confinement affecting the physical form of an entrapped drug. Mesoporous silicon is under increasing study for drug-delivery applications, and is the topic of this review. The authors focus on those properties of most relevance to this application, as well as those recent studies published on small molecule and peptide/protein delivery.

Although not suitable for accurately predicting permeation the models may be suitable for determining a rank order of permeation, which may help to select candidate molecules for in-vitro screening. However, it is important to note that such predictions need to take into account actual relative drug candidate potencies.