Abstract: Until now, great progress has been made in anti-tumor therapy. A series of novel anti-tumor drugs, such as molecular targeted drugs and monoclonal antibodies, have been emerging one after another, which have benefited a great number of tumor patients in different degrees. However, there are still many dilemmas in clinical anti-tumor therapy at present, for instance, obvious side effects, tumor resistance and so on. In recent years, the nano drug delivery system with mesoporous silica as the carrier has overcome many flaws of traditional anti-tumor treatment to a certain extent, especially the mesoporous silica nanosystem for controlling reactive oxygen species generation which has excellent tumor targeting property and biocompatibility, and minimal injury effects on normal tissue cells. So it has been regarded as one of the most promising agents in clinical applicationplaying significant anti-tumor roles through multiple approaches. This paper reviews this kind of potent nanosystem and its application to anti-tumor therapy.

Key words: mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs), reactive oxygen species (ROS), anti-tumor therapy, controlled drug release nanosystem