Biomedical Applications of Metal–Organic Frameworks Revisited

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have been shown to be great alternatives to traditional porous materials in various chemical applications, and they have been very widely studied for biomedical applications in the past decade specifically for drug storage. After our review published in 2011 [Keskin and Kızılel, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2011, 50 (4), 1799–1812, 10.1021/ie101312k], we have witnessed a very fast growth not only in the number and variety of MOFs but also in their usage across a broad spectrum of biomedical fields. With the recent integration of molecular modeling and data science approaches to the experimental studies, biomedical applications of MOFs have been significantly accelerated positioning them as pivotal components in the regenerative medicine, medical imaging, and diagnostics. In this review, we visited the diverse biomedical applications of MOFs considering the recent experimental and computational efforts on drug storage and delivery, bioimaging, and biosensing. We focused on the underlying mechanisms governing the molecular interactions between MOFs and biological systems and discussed both the opportunities and challenges in the field to highlight the potential of MOFs in advanced therapeutics for cancer and neurological diseases.