Drug-templated mesoporous silica nanocontainers with extra high payload and controlled release rate

The possibility of one-step creating of pH-sensitive mesostructured silica-based nanocontainers with exceptionally high payload using associates of two antiseptics (including hydrolyzable one) as templates is demonstrated. The effects of the template nature and the conditions of the sol-gel process on the porous structure of silica nanocontainers are studied and discussed. The kinetics of the templating drug release from such containers is studied and some features of this process are analyzed. It is shown that the drug release rate can be tuned by varying the medium pH. The bactericidal activity of two encapsulated antiseptics against the Staphylococcus aureus is evaluated in vitro by agar diffusion method with replacement of agar with agarose. The diameters of the inhibition zones for silica-based containers loaded with antiseptics increased with the pre-diffusion time at 4 °C. At the same time, empty containers (after elimination of antiseptics by etching) did not reveal any bactericidal properties.