MEDICINE’S NEW PERSPECTIVE: NANOTECHNOLOGY

Manuela Cardona G., Juanita María Gómez L. y Tatiana Hoyos B. 

Autonoma and Manizales University 

It’s clear that here, in this article the most important word should be given a definition. Nanotechnology is the technological field in which objects at nanoscale size are applied to understand and transform biological systems; this amazing technology is used to create devices at a miniature size scale for many purposes! Nanoscale sized objects are considered to be below 100nm, so to clearly understand the magnitude of how small these objects are, just think that 1cm equals to 10 million nm. 

Figure1. The objects and living units are at a nanoscale size. On the right are the objects which are man-made, these were the objects made in the last few years. We can see how small these devices can be, the Nanotube being the same size as DNA. Recovered from: Logothetidis (2006). 

There are two types of nanotechnology: wet and dry. The names seem to be very self-explanatory, but here is a short explanation of each; dry technology uses inorganic materials including metals and semi-conductors, whereas the wet studies nanoscales materials at a biological level, including cell parts. Both types of nanotechnology are used in nanomedicine.

So what is nanomedicine? This occurs when nanotechnology is applied for any medical purposes. For the application of nanotechnology to medicine, devices made from nanomaterials and nanoparticles are designed to interact with cells at a molecular level. Nanomedicine works in three main areas: nanodiagnosis, nanotherapy and nanoregenerative. 

The nanodiagnostic process is a crucial part, so any illness can be either cured or treated for the better of the patient, this process has to be reliable, specific and efficient, for the treatment to begin as soon as possible. Nanomedicine has the potential to greatly improve the entire diagnostic process with the new devices that are being created such as the biosensors, miniaturized invitro and carbon nanotubes. In the future these types of diagnostics will allow the analysis to be extremely accurate, fast, more economic and minimizing the sample extraction as well as the waste product.

The development of the diagnosis begins with taking samples of bodily fluids (tissue or blood) from the patient which is then sent to a laboratory, where it goes through an extensive process of analysis through an invitro diagnostic device. This is where the miniaturized invitro diagnostic device comes. This device would be an improvement of the diagnostic phase because rather than taking a normal size sample from the patient, it will only be necessary to take minuscule sample therefore making this method less invasive and traumatic. These devices may be small, but they are fully capable of carrying out analysis of a tiny fragment such as DNA in a more efficient way so that the doctor could recognize an illness faster than with the usual method.

The biosensor, a sensor is a device capable of recognizing a specific chemical species and ‘signalling’ the presence, activity or concentration of that species. in other words, the biosensors are used to signal any colour, mass other physical change that may lead to a disturbance in the human body. There are biosensors that are antibody/antigen based here the nanoparticles work as a biosensor component. Carbon nanotubes and microarray are also biosensors that work in a similar way; they detect a wide range of chemicals and biological species such as a low concentration of protein and viruses. 

Nanotherapy is the second area that nanomedicine works with. Only the cells or areas affected are destroyed by nanoparticles because at the time of distribution and liberation of the medications throughout the organism it will only attack those malignant cells or tissues without the creation of any secondary effects. This nanotheraphy works specifically on the administration of medications through transportation. There are many future microscopic sized devices, an example of this would the “Nanorobots”, one of them is an artificial mechanical white blood cell working in the bloodstream, destroying any biological pathogens, they are expected to be up to 1000 times faster acting than either unaided natural or antibiotic assisted biologic phagocytic defences. The artificial red bloods are expected to deliver more oxygen to the tissues; a medical application for these red blood cells would include blood substitution or transfusion so that illnesses such as anaemia or any lung disorders could be treated.

The final area is nanomedicine regenerative which is the reparation or substitution of damaged tissues and organs. Precisely the making of new tissues is where nanotechnology would become the key to everything. The idea is to design structures adequate for the growth of these tissues so that it would stimulate the same mechanisms as the cells. The main materials that are being used to recreate these cellular tissues are carbon nanotubes, biodegradable polymers of nanofibres and nanocompounds.

There aren’t many risk of using nanomedicine to the human due to the fact that only a fair amount of these devices are being used for health purposes, but the only inconveniences said that nanotechnology would bring to the future was the creation of a ’superman’ with a great memory capacity that would give others a disadvantage. Applying this new perspective to medicine in this case, nanotechnology should have a balance and rational use, so that a new era of change for the improvement of health can begin.

REFERENCES:

• Logothetidis, S. (2006). Invited article Nanotechnology in Medicine : The Medicine of Tomorrow and Nanomedicine. Hippokratia Medical Journal, 7–21.
• Roco, M. C. (2003). Nanotechnology: convergence with modern biology and medicine. Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 337–346.