Engineering of dendritic mesoporous silica nanoparticles for efficient delivery of water-insoluble paclitaxel in cancer therapy

•DMSN with highly loaded hydrophobic drug was used as the drug delivery vehicle.•DMSN featured with small particle size, high pore volume and large pore size .•A vacuum rotary evaporation-mediated casting method was applied for drug loading.•A GSH-responsive PMAsh shell and Tf were functionalized for tumor-targeting therapy.