Rod-shaped hollow mesoporous silica drug delivery system: synthetic design, ibuprofen delivery, and optical imaging

In this work, we proposed a synthesis strategy for a novel drug delivery system (DDS) composed of rod-shaped hollow mesoporous silica core and luminescent Gd2O3:Eu shell. This interesting nanostructure combines the luminescence of Eu3+ with the excellent drug carrying capacity of rod-shaped hollow mesoporous silica. The structure and morphology of the DDS were characterized by X-ray difraction, Fourier transform infrared, scanning electron microscopy and Transmission electron microscopy. The prepared DDS possessess rod-shaped core shell structure, in which length of the hollow mesoporous silica nanorods as approximately 400 nm and a width of approximately 150 nm and the Gd2O3:Eu shell was approximately 30 nm thick. The as-prepared DDS emitted bright red light, and the in vitro assays with NCI-H460 lung cancer cells domenstrated that the as-obtained DDS could rapidly and massively enter the cell. In addition, the prepared DDS showed a high loading capacity of IBU (19.4