A dual-responsive, hyaluronic acid targeted drug delivery system based on hollow mesoporous silica nanoparticles for cancer therapy

In this study, a novel drug delivery system (HMSNs-SS-HA) based on hollow mesoporous silica nanoparticles (HMSNs) was developed for delivering anticancer drugs (e.g., doxorubicin (DOX)) to targeted tumour cells by using disulfide bonds as redox-sensitive linkers and hyaluronic acid (HA) molecules as both capping and targeting agents. Well-dispersed HMSNs were synthesized with a dimension of around 100 nm. Detailed physical characterization further demonstrated that HMSNs-SS-HA has been successfully constructed. The in vitro drug release experiments displayed the enzyme and redox dual-responsive and sustained drug release properties of DOX loaded HMSNs-SS-HA. Additionally, a series of biological evaluations indicated that these DOX loaded HMSNs-SS-HA could accurately target murine mammary carcinoma (4T1) cells to induce cell apoptosis in vitro and suppress tumour growth in vivo. These results demonstrated that DOX loaded HMSNs-SS-HA was suitable as a potential and efficient drug delivery nanosystem for cancer therapy.