Controlling the interaction between cells and silica nanoparticles

Abstract

In recent years, the application of silica nanoparticles in the biomedical field experienced a great development, showing a sharp increase in the number of published articles and patents. The driving forces for these and future developments are the possibility to design nanoparticles with homogeneous size and structure and amenable to specific grafting. In this way, it is possible to control the interaction of nanoparticles with cells. Moreover, it is possible to tune the characteristics of the nanoparticles to meet the requirements of each specific cell and desired application. Herein, we present different strategies developed to optimize the size, morphology, surface topography, elemental ratio, hydrophobic/hydrophilic balance, and erosion rate, which contribute to understand the nature of this inherently complicated cell-nanoparticles interactions mechanism, which will determine the resulting function performance.