You are on page 1of 2

NANOBOTS/NANOROBOTS

Imagine going to the doctor to get treatment for a persistent fever. Instead of giving you a pill or a shot,
the doctor refers you to a special medical team which implants a tiny robot into your bloodstream. The
robot detects the cause of your fever, travels to the appropriate system and provides a dose of
medication directly to the infected area.
Surprisingly, we're not that far off from seeing devices like this actually used in medical procedures.
They're called nanorobots and engineering teams around the world are working to design robots that
will eventually be used to treat everything from hemophilia to cancer.
NANOFIBERS
While there is some discussion on the exact definition of a nanofiber, the consensus in the nonwovens
industry has been that anything under 1 micron in diameter is a nanofiber. To put this in perspective,
one nanometer is equivalent to one billionth of a meter, making nanofibers many orders of magnitude
smaller than an average human hair.
Tissue repair by autologous cell/tissue transplantation is one of the most promising techniques for tissue
regeneration. Scientists found out that there is possibility that nanofibers can be used in tissue
engineering.













NANOMEDICINE
Nanomedicine is the medical application of nanotechnology. Terms such as biomedical nanotechnology
and nanobiotechnology, are also used to describe this hybrid field.
- Drug Delivery
Nanotechnology has provided the possibility of delivering drugs to specific cells using
nanoparticles.
It is greatly observed nanoparticles are promising tools for the advancement of drug delivery,
medical imaging, and as diagnostic sensors.
Ex.
Nanodiamonds - diamond particle with a diameter of 2 to 8 nm and surface functional groups to
bind various kinds of molecule. Experiments by researchers in Northwestern University on
mouse models with chemotherapy-resistant liver and breast cancers show that the
nanodiamonds with a normally lethal dose of doxorubicin significantly reduce the size of the
tumors without toxic side effects expected from the drug if administered alone.

Silica-based nanoparticles - used to deliver molecules to transplanted cells derived from stem
cells. Using a mouse model, scientists delivered two synthetic versions of neurotrophic growth
factors locally using mesoporous nanoparticles to motor neurons derived from transplanted
embryonic stem cells and reported improved long term survival

- Cancer
The small size of nanoparticles endows them with properties that can be very useful in
oncology, particularly in imaging. Quantum dots (nanoparticles with quantum confinement
properties, such as size-tunable light emission), when used in conjunction with MRI (magnetic
resonance imaging), can produce exceptional images of tumor sites.

If scientists can load their cancer-detecting gold nanoparticles with anticancer drugs, they could
attack the cancer exactly where it lives. Such a treatment means fewer side effects and less
medication used. Another used nanoparticles as a companion to other treatments. These
particles were sucked up by cancer cells and the cells were then heated with a magnetic field to
weaken them. The weakened cancer cells were then much more susceptible to chemotherapy.

It may sound odd, but the dye in your blue jeans or your ballpoint pen has also been paired with
gold nanoparticles to fight cancer. This dye, known as phthalocyanine, reacts with light. The
nanoparticles take the dye directly to cancer cells while normal cells reject the dye. Once the
particles are inside, scientists "activate" them with light to destroy the cancer.

You might also like