Exploration of covalent-organic frameworks and metal-organic frameworks for drug delivery applications

Covalent-organic frameworks (COFs) and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been a promising carrier for drug delivery because of excellent biocompatibility, developed porous structure and sufficient interactions of host-guest molecules. This paper mainly reviews latest research progress of COFs and MOFs including their synthesis approaches and applications in drug delivery. Specifically, COFs as drug carriers in chemotherapy, photodynamic therapy, photothermal therapy, synergistic therapy, anti-bacteria, and anti-inflammatory were systematically presented. MOFs in pharmaceutical drug delivery, controlled-release drug delivery, stimulus response and targeted drug delivery systems are introduced. The advantages and disadvantages of COFs and MOFs in synthesis and drug delivery performances was systematically compared. The future development trends of COFs and MOFs for drug delivery applications are discussed.