Extra-Large Pore Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles for Directing in Vivo M2 Macrophage Polarization by Delivering IL-4

Over the past decade, mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) smaller than 200 nm with a high colloidal stability have been extensively studied for systemic drug delivery. Although small molecule delivery via MSNs has been successful, the encapsulation of large therapeutic biomolecules, such as proteins or DNA, is limited due to small pore size of the conventional MSNs obtained by soft-templating. Here, we report the synthesis of mesoporous silica nanoparticles with extra-large pores (XL-MSNs) and their application to in vivo cytokine delivery for macrophage polarization. Uniform, size-controllable XL-MSNs with 30 nm extra-large pores were synthesized using organic additives and inorganic seed nanoparticles. XL-MSNs showed significantly higher loadings for the model proteins with different molecular weights compared to conventional small pore MSNs. XL-MSNs were used to deliver IL-4, which is an M2-polarizing cytokine and very quickly degraded in vivo, to macrophages and polarize them to anti-inflammatory M...