β-Amino alcohol-based organosilane tailored magnetite embedded mesoporous silica nanoparticles exhibit controlled-release of curcumin triggered by pH

Controlled-release feature is still a major challenge in the design of drug carriers, especially in cancer therapy. In our investigation, we successfully tailored the surface of magnetite embedded mesoporous silica (MNP@SiO2) with β-amino alcohol-based organosilane through a facile and one-pot method and further characterized using FTIR, XRD, N2 adsorption-desorption, VSM, SEM, and TEM. The functionalized MNP@SiO2 exhibits high loading capacity up to 309.23 mg g−1. Additionally, this functionalization also acts as a barrier for preventing premature drug release. Accordingly, only small amount of curcumin (∼10%) is released at pH 7.4 and incrementally increases at pH 4.0 (49.12%). This indicates that the controlled-release feature is provided by tailored-nanoparticles, denoted as MNP@SiO2-NH2. Our study also reveals good magnetic properties (Ms = 22.57 emu g−1) of MNP@SiO2-NH2 which possibly extend its application for magnetic hyperthermia to improve therapeutics efficacy.