Fabrication and characterization of porous silicon nanoparticles for siRNA delivery

RNA interference (RNAi) using small interfering RNA (siRNA) has been proposed for the therapy of human diseases and in particular cancers. Due to the instability and physicochemical properties of siRNA, the development of siRNA delivery system has attracted much attention. This study aimed at the fabrication of porous silicon nanoparticles (pSi NPs) as carriers for siRNA. pSi NPs possess a high surface area and are biodegradable and biocompatible. pSi NPs with two types of surface chemistry (oxidized and amine-functionalized) were fabricated and characterized. The surface area of pSi NPs was found to be 390 m²/g with a pore width of 9.2 nm. To investigate siRNA loading efficiency of pSi NPs, duplex siRNA was incubated with nanoparticles for 1 hour. The loading capacity of oxidized pSi NPs and amine-functionalized pSi NPs was found to be 1.95 μg/mg particles and 2.02 μg/mg particles, respectively. Further investigation on cellular uptake and gene silencing of siRNA-loaded pSi nanoparticles will be conducted to provide more details on their possible use for siRNA delivery.