Reflexos de imagem

Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology, and Medicine 3 (2007) 20 – 31 www.nanomedjournal.com

Clinical Nanomedicine

The present and future of nanotechnology in human health care
S.K. Sahoo, PhD4, S. Parveen, MS, J.J. Panda, MS
Institute of Life Sciences, Nanomedicine Laboratory, Chandrasekharpur, Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India Received 3 March 2006; revised 4 October 2006; accepted 21 November 2006

Abstract

Nanotechnology is a multidisciplinary field that covers a vast and diverse array of devices derived from engineering, physics, chemistry, and biology. The burgeoning new field of nanotechnology, opened up by rapid advances in science and technology, creates myriad new opportunities for advancing medical science and disease treatment in human health care. Applications of nanotechnology to medicine and physiology imply materials and devices designed to interact with the body at subcellular (i.e., molecular) scales with a high degree of specificity. This can be potentially translated into targeted cellular and tissue-specific clinical applications designed to achieve maximal therapeutic efficacy with minimal side effects. In this review the chief scientific and technical aspects of nanotechnology are introduced, and some of its potential clinical applications are discussed. D 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Nanotechnology; Nanomedicine; Drug delivery; Nanodiagnostic; Molecular imaging

Key words:

Nanotechnology can be defined as the science and engineering involved in the design, synthesis, characterization and application of materials and devices whose smallest functional organization in at least one dimension is on the nanometer scale (one-billionth of a meter) [1,2]. In the past few years nanotechnology has grown by leaps and bounds, and this multidisciplinary scientific field is undergoing explosive development [3-6]. It can prove to be a boon for human health care, because nanoscience and nanotechnologies have a huge potential to bring