Nano Medicine to Reveal Signs of Disease

Nanotechnology consists of the processing of, separation, consolidation, and deformation of materials by one atom or one molecule. More broadly, nanotechnology includes the many techniques used to create structures at a size scale below 100 nm. The biological and medical research communities have exploited the unique properties of nanomaterials for various applications

Nanomedicine

Nanotechnology has become a new advent of medicine (nano-medicine). The use of nanotechnology in medicine offers some exciting possibilities. Some techniques are only imagined, while others are at various stages of testing, or actually being used today. Two main approaches are used in nanotechnology: one is a “bottom-up” approach where materials and devices are built up atom by atom, the other a “top-down” approach where they are synthesized or constructed by removing existing material from larger entities. Nanotechnology in medicine involves applications of nanoparticles currently under development, as well as longer ranges research that involves the use of manufactured nano-robots to make repairs at the cellular level (referred to as nanomedicine). Nanotechnology-on-a-chip is one more dimension of lab-on-a-chip technology. Biological tests measuring the presence or activity of selected substances become quicker, more sensitive and more flexible when certain nanoscale particles are put to work as tags or labels.

The overall drug consumption and side-effects can be lowered significantly by depositing the active agent in the morbid region only and in no higher dose than needed. This highly selective approach reduces costs and human suffering. A targeted or personalized medicine reduces the drug consumption and treatment expenses resulting in an overall societal benefit by reducing the costs to the public health system.

Nanotechnology can help to reproduce or to repair damaged tissue. This so-called “tissue engineering” makes use of artificially stimulated cell proliferation by using suitable nanomaterial-based scaffolds and growth factors.

Applications of medical nanotechnology

Applications of medical nanotechnology span across a variety of areas such as in Drugs, Medicines, Therapeutics: in Diagnostics of diseases, abnormal conditions etc., in Surgery, in Medical Robotics, in the general sake of increasing knowledge of the human body, etc.