Nanotechnology: Nanomedicine

Nanomedicine Nanomedicine is a branch of nanotechnology that is used for in vivo and in vitro diagnostic testing and treatment of diseases (Figure 1). Nanotechnology has the potential to repair or even replace tissues and structural units such as the human nephron.¹ The proposed 2010 budget for the National Nanotechnology Initiative is $1.6 billion. From this fund, the proposed allotment for the National Institute for Health (NIH) is $326 million.² The NIH has established eight Nanomedicine Development Centers across the country to research different applications of nanomedicine.³ For example, the center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, is the Center for Protein Folding Machinery, while the Center of Cell Control (CCC) is at the University of California, Los Angeles.³ These eight centers work in partnership to understand nanoscale properties of cells and tissues over a wide range of diseases and conditions, while at the same time each center focuses on a specific type of disease. The Center for Protein Folding Machinery, focuses on protein misfolding diseases such as Huntington's disease while the CCC is concentrating its efforts on developing drug cocktails for HIV.^4,5

In recent months, Dr. Chad Mirkin of the Northwestern University Institute for Nanotechnology was awarded the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize as the world's most-cited nanomedicine researcher. The major objective of much of his work has been that of very early detection of disease-related molecules. His Verigene ID System® (Nanosphere, Inc.) can simultaneously test patients for a multitude of markers in less than an hour.⁶ Mirkin's bar-code test…

ABBREVIATIONS: HIV= Human Immunodeficiency Virus; MIT= Massachusetts Institute of Technology; MRI = magnetic resonance imaging; COPD= chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; FDA= Federal Drug Administration, surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), Quantum dots (QDots®).