Metal-organic frameworks as an appropriate platform for controlled drug release

Increase the performance of functional molecules is an important challenge in biotechnology, if leads to greater using of them in pharmaceutical applications. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a class of porous materials which due to their special properties including high surface area, regular porosity and available pores are extremely significant to use in catalytic, sensing, separation, gas adsorption and more recently in drug delivery.
Herein we used MOFs as a platform for controlled drug release and reported a technique, which pharmaceutical agents are encapsulated in a zinc zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF-8). In this work, metformin, an oral antihyperglycemic agent for the treatment of type II diabetes trapped inside the ZIF-8 pores through a mechanochemical ball-milling technique. Due to having regular porosity and zinc ions, ZIF-8 could help to better absorption of metforminin. The synthesis of the MOF and the encapsulating process of the drug were performed by using a convenient solvent-free one pot technique. It was shown that with this approach, metformin is released in the stomach via a controlled manner over a longer time that leads to increases of metformin bioavailability.