Multistage porous silicon for cancer therapy

Advances in biomedical engineering have paved the way for medical innovation and expansion. Many diseases now have hope of a cure through technology brought to reality by the vision and creativity of basic researchers, translational scientists, and doctors. Cancer, in its various manifestations, has plagued the health of millions of people around the world, but still lacks effective therapeutic treatments. By exploiting aberrant native vasculature and unique tissue markers, it is possible today to target the delivery of a given drug to the disease site. In many instances, the body's natural barriers, and those constructed in the malignant microenvironment, still pose an insurmountable obstacle for the accumulation of efficacious drug levels at the tumor. The nanoporous silicon technology developed by our team in the past 10 years has offered a new and exciting tool for the delivery of drugs. A new paradigm of therapeutics, named multistage vectors, has emerged, with the ability to preferentially target tumors while protecting and delivering payload to the site of action. The boundaries of the utility of such a system are not limited to cancer but hold the potential to extend to all avenues of medicine. This chapter describes the principles of tumorigenesis and the biological barriers as they pertain to the uses and functions of multistage mesoporous silicon. We will discuss the current state of the art in the fabrication, modification, and assembly processes, and provide an overview of the application of this innovative technology in the field of cancer therapy.