When administered in high systemicdoses, chemotherapeutic drugs can cause severe toxicity to the healthy tissuecells, resulting in hair loss, nausea and anemia.  Drug encapsulation into delivery particulates is a way toreduce this toxicity, while allowing a high concentration of the drug to bedelivered directly at the tumor site. Our ongoing research has focused onmesoporous inorganic-based silica particles as possible carriers for theanticancer agent, Doxorubicin (Dox). We already showed that mesoporoussilicates functionalized with sulfonate (SO3-Na+)groups were capable of loading up to 200 mg of Dox per gram of solid and that asustained and complete Dox release was obtained from these Dox-loaded materials.In this project, mesoporous silicates functionalized with various amounts ofboth sulfonate and phenyl groups were investigated for their Dox loadingcapacity. The incorporation of phenyl groups significantly lower the Doxloading capacity of the materials. The release profiles of Doxorubicin fromDox-loaded sulfonate-functionalized material in release media of various CaCl2concentrations (0.08 wt%, 0.17 wt%, and 0.25 wt%) were monitored by UV-Vis at37�C. The presence of significant amounts of Ca2+ ions in therelease medium seems to increase the release rate of Dox, which may beexplained as two molecules of Dox in their ionic form are released for every Ca2+ion.

Effects of the material functionalization and the ionic composition of the release medium on the loading and the release of the chemotherapeutic agent doxorubicin onto and from functionalized mesoporous silicates

241st National Meeting (2011)

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