The field of medicine is constantly seeking smarter ways to deliver drugs, aiming to maximize their healing power while minimizing side effects. A recent comprehensive review highlights a powerful new tool in this quest: Metal-Organic Frameworks, or MOFs. Imagine these as microscopic, customizable cages with immense surface areas, capable of holding vast amounts of therapeutic cargo. Their true innovation lies in their tunability; scientists can design them to be stable during transit through the body but to open up and release their drug load only when they encounter specific disease triggers, like the acidic environment of a tumor.
This “smart” capability is leading to significant advances. For cancer therapy, MOF-based systems have been engineered to deliver multiple drugs directly to cancer cells, overcoming drug resistance with remarkable efficiency. In respiratory medicine, MOFs are being shaped into inhalable powders that carry drugs deep into the lungs, offering new hope for treating conditions like pulmonary fibrosis. Furthermore, these versatile frameworks are proving adept at protecting and delivering fragile but powerful new medicines, including gene-editing tools like CRISPR, opening up frontiers in genetic disease treatment.
Despite this exciting progress, the journey from the lab to the pharmacy is still underway. Researchers are actively tackling challenges related to large-scale manufacturing and long-term safety to ensure these nano-carriers are both effective and harmless. By continuing to refine these microscopic sponges, scientists are paving the way for a new era of precision medicine, where treatments are not only more potent but also far more precise.
The work entitled “Metal-Organic Frameworks in Pharmaceutical Research” was published on Pharmaceutical Science Advances (published on October 15, 2025).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pscia.2025.100096