A Look at Nanomedicine
Following up on some of their previous articles, Nanowerk looks again at nanomedicine: "Nanotechnology promises us a radically different medicine than the cut, poke and carpet bomb (think chemotherapy) medicine of today. The two major differences of nanomedicine will be a) the tools it uses - the main workhorse will be [multifunctional nanoparticles] - and b) it will enable a perfectly targeted and individual treatment: organs and bones, really any body tissue, can be diagnosed and treated on a cell by cell basis with precise dosing and monitoring through the use of biomolecular sensors. ... Looking into the future, Freitas envisions 'biocompatible surgical nanorobots that can find and eliminate isolated cancerous cells, remove microvascular obstructions and recondition vascular endothelial cells, perform noninvasive tissue and organ transplants, conduct molecular repairs on traumatized extracellular and intracellular structures, and even exchange new whole chromosomes for old ones inside individual living human cells.'"