Mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) exhibit desirable features for drug delivery system (DDS) fabrication. Nanovalves are a type of DDS in which drugs are stored inside the nanoparticle pores and can be released under different stimuli. Several studies have focused on the size of MSN and do not exploit the effect of particle morphology in drug carriers. However, some authors have demonstrated that nanorods exhibit higher cellular uptake than those spherical ones. In this work, we prepared three different types of MSN aiming to fabricate several nanovalve reservoirs (Figure 1). Spherical and rod-shaped mesoporous silica can be synthesized controlling the reagent ratio of hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide, water, tetraethyl orthosilicate and the solution pH. Also, for the synthesis of mesoporous silica nanorods, BuOH was used as co-solvent. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) shows spherical (~ 85 nm) and nanorods with lengths about 100 nm (short) and 500 nm (long). N2 isotherms of MSN are of type IV for all materials, suggesting the presence of cylindrical mesopores. Short and long nanorods exhibit, respectively, surface areas of 1017 and 1020 m2 g-1, pore volumes of 1.00 and 1.02cm3 g-1 and narrow pore distribution of 2.7 nm (BJH method). Further spectroscopic analyses are in progress. As perspectives, we will work on with chemical modification of MSN followed by drug loading and pore closing of these systems. The effect of these MSN shapes and sizes of the final devices (nanovalves) on cellular uptake will be evaluated by biological assays.