TECHNOLOGY

Nanotechnology in Medicine

Nanotechnology in Medicine

Introduction

There is much talk of the future and promising applications of nanotechnology in the electronics field where miniaturization by current silicon etching is expected to reach its limits around 2015. But there is another area in which nanotechnology will enable a technological revolution at least as important in medicine and biology. In their report last week entitled "Nanoscience and progress", Senators Jean-Louis Lorrain (UMP, Haut-Rhin) and Daniel Raoul (PS, Maine-et-Loire), members of the Parliamentary Office for Evaluation of scientific and technological (OPECST), provide significant insights into the main lines of this scientific development: exploration of nano-and nano-diagnostics, nanomedicines, neuroprostheses and finally tissue engineering to replace tissues or organs. Specifically, in recent months, several scientific publications have confirmed how nanotechnology is being spread in the field of biology and medicine, both as research tools as powerful and very promising therapeutic means. Thus recently, researchers at Rice University in Houston have experimented with a system nanoballes gold can destroy inoperable cancers. These nanoballes consist of small silica particles with a diameter of 110 nm, covered with a layer thickness of 10 nm gold warming up when a light lying in the near infrared is sent on the particles, destroying cancer cells nearby. Researchers have succeeded in making nanoballes able to target tumors and to link these nanoballes to antibodies that bind only to cancer cells.

This new technique will be tested on patients with severe lung cancer. Thus, Baker he made use of polymers known as the spherical designation of dendrimers to transport in a cell of methotrexate, a product that attacks certain types of cancer cells. In laboratory experiments on tumor cells, methotrexate has eliminated one hundred times more cancer cells when administered by the nanoparticles through that when he was just added to the culture cells. Other exciting research, conducted by Alberto Bianco at the CNRS in Strasbourg recently shown that carbon nanotubes can be used to penetrate inside the cell nucleus order to deliver drugs and vaccines. "This research is in its infancy" said Alberto Bianco, "but we suggest that nanotubes could one day serve as tools of incredible precision to modify the DNA inside the nucleus or convey, in a specific part of the cell, a drug.”Across the Atlantic, at Harvard University, U.S. scientists have developed nanoprobes, smaller than the width of human hair, which revealed sensitivity 1000 times greater than standard DNA chips. These nanoprobes have been tested successfully to detect the specific genetic mutation of cystic fibrosis. According to the researchers, these ultrasensitive nanoprobes could be, within 5 years, available to surgeons and physicians (Tibbals, 2011).

These researchers developed synthetic molecules that promote growth neurons, in the longer term be able to repair the spinal cord causing paralysis. Samuel I. Stupp and his team have succeeded in selectively producing nerve cells differentiated using a three dimensional network of nanofibers, a technique very promise in regenerative medicine. Meanwhile, researchers at Indiana University, Bloomington, believe it is possible, by exploiting the properties of Raman spectroscopy ...