Healthy challenges before nanomedicine moves from the lab to the bedside

Imagine doctors using carbon nanotubes to shrink cancerous tumours, or deploying peptide-based nanofibres to stop bleeding or to regenerate severed nerves.

Indeed, as the list of nanobased medical products continues to grow, and as more and more nano-enabled products enter pharmaceutical ‘pipelines’, it is clear that nanomedicine will see significant progress in a few key areas: drug delivery, imaging, the detection of disease, and
regenerative medicine.

It is in drug delivery and imaging that nanotechnology is likely to have the biggest impact, largely because it will be possible to target only those regions where drugs are needed, leaving the surrounding healthy tissue intact.

multifunctional drug delivery systems in which the nanoparticles carry both targeting agents and therapeutic payloads may also double up to act as contrast agents for MRI, CT and other imaging techniques.

Detection tools made from nanowires and nanocantilever arrays allow faster diagnosis and, therefore, earlier prevention of disease. It is foreseeable that these and other advances will offer personalized diagnostic tools and treatment (theranostics) in the future, especially for treating cancer.

By virtue of their small size, nanobased platforms have several advantages when treating diseases, which are largely caused by damage at the cellular or molecular level.

Nanotechnology allows cells, proteins and genes to be manipulated with precision, a feat impossible with existing surgical tools, which are large and crude from the viewpoint of a
cell. Equally dramatic is the ability of these nanomaterials to move through our bodies and deliver therapeutics to previously unreachable places.

All this, of course, creates a new set of concerns related to toxicity and biodistribution.

This ultimatly boils down to concentrate on the healthy challenges before nanomedicine moves from the lab to the bedside !!!!