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Abstract
Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) since their discovery, have been used in a variety of applications, including, but not limited to gas adsorption and storage, food packaging, biofilms and drug delivery. This is attributed to the vast array of options for its component parts (the metal nodes and the organic linkers) and its high surface area and high porosity. Recently, there has been a surge of MOFs in the drug delivery realm, especially in the active release of cargo from the MOF since it offers a better spatial and temporal control. Herein, we present two novel “door-opening” MOFs to release the encapsulated cargo via irradiation.
Both of these MOFs answer certain critical questions. The first MOF is, to our knowledge, the first time a photolabile moiety has been used to encapsulate cargo and release said cargo only by irradiation at 365 nm. When faced with toxicity issues with its by-products, we answered the question with our second photolabile moiety that ensured cargo release only upon irradiation at 365 nm.
There are advances to be made still in this field, but this work aims to start the process by designing these proof-of-concept MOFs, which in turn can be taken forward to be used in the drug delivery processes with negligible negative effects in therapeutics.