Chemotherapy is the most common treatment for all cancer patients but this treatment poses many side effects due to lack of drug’s selectivity. To overcome this problem, utilizing a better and more effective delivery agent is the solution. Mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) emerged as a promising platform in development of drug delivery agent. This is due to its desirable properties such as tunable pores, large surface area, good biocompatibility and easy functionalization. Furthermore, these properties can be tuned through the utilization of alternative template such as pyridinium ionic liquid. Besides, by employing surface functionalization, the effectiveness of MSNs as drug delivery agent may also increase. This work reported the usage of 1-hexadecylpyridinium bromide ionic liquid as template for MSNs production and the surface of MSNs was then further functionalized via post – grafting method in order to obtain MSN – NH₂, MSN – SH and MSN – COOH as drug carrier, respectively. These functionalized MSNs were then used to study the drug loading and drug release of hydrophilic drug, gemcitabine and hydrophobic drug, quercetin. For quercetin, MSN-NH₂ had the highest drug loading percentage (72%) and slowest release (14%) in 48 h while for gemcitabine, it was found that MSN-COOH had the highest drug loading percentage (45%) and slowest release (15%) in 48 h. Based on the results, it is suggested that mesoporous silica nanoparticle with surface functionalization has suitable properties for controlled drug release which gives constant release behavior over a period of time to avoid repeated administration of drug where the drug is administered at a fixed dosage and regular time interval.

化学疗法是所有癌症患者最常用的治疗方法，但是由于缺乏药物的选择性，这种治疗方法会带来许多副作用。为了克服这个问题，解决方案是使用更好和更有效的输送剂。介孔二氧化硅纳米颗粒（MSNs）成为药物输送剂开发中一个有希望的平台。这是由于其理想的特性，例如可调节的孔，较大的表面积，良好的生物相容性和易于功能化。此外，可以通过使用替代模板（例如吡啶鎓离子液体）来调整这些属性。此外，通过采用表面官能化，MSN作为药物递送剂的有效性也可以提高。_{如图2所示}，MSN – SH和MSN – COOH分别作为药物载体。然后将这些功能化的MSN用于研究亲水性药物吉西他滨和疏水性药物槲皮素的载药量和药物释放。槲皮素的MSN-NH ₂在48小时内的载药率最高（72％）而释放最慢（14％），而吉西他滨的MSN-COOH的载药率最高（45％）且最慢在48小时内释放（15％）。根据结果​​，建议具有表面功能化的介孔二氧化硅纳米颗粒具有合适的性质，可控药物释放，可在一段时间内保持恒定的释放行为，避免以固定剂量和固定时间重复给药的情况间隔。