Drug delivery systems based on
hydrogel microcarriers have shown enormous achievements in
tumor treatment. Current research direction mainly concentrated on the improvement of the structure and function of the microcarriers to effectively deliver drugs for enhanced
cancer treatment with decreased general toxicity. Herein, we put forward novel hierarchical mesoporous
silicon nanoparticles (MSNs) and
bovine serum albumin (BSA) composite microparticles (MPMSNs@DOX/FU) delivering
doxorubicin (DOX) and
5-fluorouracil (FU) for effective
tumor therapy with good safety. The DOX and FU could be efficiently loaded in the MSNs, which were further encapsulated into
methacrylate BSA (BSAMA) microparticles by applying a microfluidic technique. When transported to the
tumor area, DOX and FU will be persistently released from the MPMSNs@DOX/FU and kept locally to lessen general toxicity. Based on these advantages, MPMSNs@DOX/FU could observably kill
liver cancer cells in vitro, and evidently suppress the
tumor development of
liver cancer nude mice model in vivo. These results suggest that such hierarchical
hydrogel microparticles are perfect candidates for
liver cancer treatment, holding promising expectations for impactful
cancer therapy.