Drug-Delivery Capability of Mesoporous Silicon

To assess the drug-delivery capability of the device we verified the release over time of the anti-tumor drug PtCl(O,O^-acac)(DMSO). PtCl(O,O′-acac)(DMSO) is a platinum(II) complex containing acetylacetonate ( $acac$ ), characterized by a high toxicity both in immortalized cell lines, as human cervical carcinoma (HeLa) cells or human breast cancer (MCF-7) cells, and in primary cultured human breast epithelial cells [45 (link)]. In this work, we incubated the mesoporous silicon samples in 30 μM/50 μM solutions of PtCl(O,O′-acac)(DMSO) in D.I. water for 60 h to load the drug. The release kinetic was tested over time up to 15 days, by immersion of the loaded sample in DI water and monitoring the drug concentration at different time, through the analysis of drug in solution by a spectrophotometer UV/Vis (LAMBDA 25 UV/Vis PerkinElmer), after standard calibration procedures of the samples.