Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers and is the fifth common cause of cancer‐related mortality in men. Current methods for PCa treatment are insufficient owing to the challenges related to the non‐specificity, instability and side effects caused by the drugs and therapy agents. These drawbacks can be mitigated by the design of a suitable drug delivery system that can ensure targeted delivery and minimise side effects. Silica based nanoparticles (SBNPs) have emerged as one of the most versatile materials for drug delivery due to their tunable porosities, high surface area and tremendous capacity to load various sizes and chemistry of drugs. This review gives a brief overview of the diagnosis and current treatment strategies for PCa outlining their existing challenges. It critically analyzes the design, development and application of pure, modified and hybrid SBNPs based drug delivery systems in the treatment of PCa, their advantages and limitations.
Core-shell mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) have recently emerged as a promising drug delivery system that can be used for loading large quantities of different types of drugs or creating a stimuli responsive system. However, achieving this unique core-shell morphology with smaller size, high specific surface area, and large pore volume is highly challenging. In this study, we report the synthesis of core-shell MSN using a triple surfactant assisted soft-templating approach. We show that the size, morphological and textural properties of the core-shell structures can be easily modified by controlling the amount of fluorocarbon-4 surfactant. The optimised core shell MSN showed the highest surface area of 1496 m2/g that helped in achieving a high drug loading of model drugs doxorubicin (34%) or docetaxel (50%). The small size of core-shell MSN facilitated its rapid uptake within the PC-3 cells within 12 h. The cytotoxicity data using drug loaded MSN showed high cytotoxicity in both PC-3 and LNCaP cell lines suggesting that this versatile platform is efficient in delivering different drugs to various cell types. This unique triple surfactant assisted synthesis of core-shell MSN will open the door for multifaceted applications in imaging and drug delivery.
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