Since applying biocompatible mesoporous silica, with an adequate size and high
drug loading capacity, is an important and challenging subject in targeted drug
delivery, hence in present study our main focus is to introduce an efficient protocol
for synthesis of these nanoparticles with considering both reducing size and
increasing pore sizes approach. In our suggested route, different amount of
triethanolamine have been used to control of nanoparticle sizes via complexing with
ortho silicate functional group. Moreover, it has been used to control of pH solution.
Furthermore, ammonium nitrate as a weak acid, has been used for micellar template
extraction and the obtained results have been compared with common salt such as
sodium chloride. BET analysis showed that pore sizes configuration is very better
created when ammonium nitrate has been applied in comparison with other common
routes which resulted in enhanced specific surface area (563 m2/g) and pore size (3.5
nm). In the following, the surfaces of mesoporous silica nanoparticles have been
functionalized with particular compound such as amine functionalized, using (3-
Aminopropyl) tri-ethoxysilane, trastuzumab modified silica nanoparticles loaded
with doxorubicin for targeted breast cancer therapy, by 1-Ethyl-3-(3-
dimethylaminopropyl)-carbodiimide/N-hydroxysuccinimide cross link agent, and
finally fluorescein function has been optimized. Molecular fluorescence imaging
approved that these surface modified nanoparticles have been specifically targeted
to breast cancer cell lines (HER2 overexpressed SKBR3 cells). Drug loading
capacity of these nanoparticles was high and it has shown to be 57.40% for
doxorubicin which discloses the priority of presented silica in biological application
comparing to other reported mesoporous nanosilica