text: Mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) are considered to be one of the most widely used systems for drug delivery. MSNs have some of the characteristic features of gated systems such as being porous and having a high loading capacity, but they also exhibit some special features such as increased biocompatibility and chemical inertness. These delivery systems are composed of two parts: the inorganic scaffold and the molecular gates. In a study conducted by the Kong Lab at Deakin University in Australia, the researchers generated MSNs by adding tetraethyl orthosilicate to aqueous cetyltrimethylammonium bromide. The MSN's they created had a surface area of 363 m^2/g, an average pore size of 2.59 nm, and a pore volume of 0.33 cm^3/g.