Consideration of Metal Organic Frameworks for Respiratory Delivery

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) have garnered increased attention over the past 20 years Due to their porosity, high surface area, and nearly limitless customization and tunability MOFs have been designed for applications ranging from gas storage and separation to catalysis to sensing to biomedical engineering Within the latter category, MOFs offer an appealing function for drug delivery as they can be loaded with multiple therapeutic moieties tailored to target specific disorders with triggered and controlled release characteristics However, there is an unmet need to assess their viability for pulmonary treatment via inhalation Targeting pulmonary disorders including infectious diseases by delivering medication directly to the lungs attacks the primary site of infection rather than relying on systemic distribution The inherent advantage of this strategy is maximizing local lung concentrations of the drug An introduction to inhaled therapies is provided here as a preamble to a brief summary of the current development state of MOF drug delivery systems This review is intended to highlight the relative disparity between research toward MOFs as pulmonary drug delivery vehicles compared to other delivery platforms Prospective biomedical applications for inhalable MOFs are also discussed