To understand the concepts of nanotechnology and its uses, we must first get an understanding of what nanotechnology is. The size of a nanometer is a billionth of a meter, or 10-9 of a meter. To illustrate the size of a manometer, picture 100,000 manometers as the thickness of a sheet of newspaper. It also takes 25,000,000 manometers to make up one inch. On a comparative scale, if a marble were a nanometer, then one meter would be the size of the Earth (What is Nanotechnology, retrieved 1/13/15). Everything around us is made up of atoms; our bodies, food we eat and the clothes we wear, houses we live in, and the air we breathe.
All we touch, see, and smell are made up of atoms. None of the atoms that make up our world can be seen with the naked eye or with a typical microscope that is used in high school science labs. If an atom cannot be seen with a regular microscope, then a manometer will definitely not be seen either. In order to see what a nanometer is, a special microscope was invented about 30 years ago, which now makes it easier to see nanometers in larger scales. While nanotechnologies in our modern life are relatively new, ancient people have used them for centuries.
Alternate-sized gold and silver particles created colors in the stained glass windows of medieval churches hundreds of years ago. The artists back then just did not know that the process they used to create these beautiful works of art actually led to changes in the composition of the materials they were working with. Today’s scientists and engineers are finding a wide variety of ways to deliberately make materials at the nanoscale to take advantage of their enhanced properties such as higher strength, lighter weight, increased control of light spectrum, and greater chemical reactivity than their larger-scale counterparts are.
(What is Nanotechnology, retrieved 1/7/ 15). NANOTECHNOLOGY AND UNDERSTANDING ITS CONCEPTS IN MEDICINE Nanotechnology, which has often been called a new technique, has the potential to influence our society in just about every area of our lives. While nanotechnology is being used in such products as sunscreen and cosmetics, it is also being used to improve everything from batteries to electronic equipment. One of the biggest areas of nanotechnology is in its use in the medical science research field.
Because the medical field deals with things on the smallest of levels, the use of nanotechnology prove to be very beneficial for those who are facing cancer and heart disease. To help in the medical field, nanobots have been created to perform many different functions inside and outside of the human body, such as repairing a body’s cells or operating on a baby while still in the womb. Without the use of nanobots, doctors would not have otherwise been able to perform such delicate research or surgeries.
While medical specialists, such as those in cancer research centers, heart specialists, and other medical professions are using nanotechnology in their field, The National Cancer Institute, in the hopes that investments in this branch of nanomedicine, has created the alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer. This is in the hopes that investments could help in detection and treatment of different types of cancers. The National Cancer Institute states that several nanocarrier-based drugs are already on the market and many more are still in clinical trials; these clinical trials could help in the cure of certain types of cancers.
Nanotechnology can provide rapid and sensitive detection of cancer-related molecules, enabling scientists to detect molecular changes even when they occur only in a small percentage of cells. Nanotechnology also has the potential to generate unique and highly effective therapeutic agents (National Cancer Institute, retrieved, 1/13/2015). Nanotechnology can also be used in the treatment of heart disease. (The Pharmaceutical Journal, Vol. 290, p382 | URI: 11119421). NANOTECHNOLOGY AND UNDERSTANDING ITS CONCEPTS IN MEDICINE
As the population ages, more people will die from cardiovascular diseases, which is the most common cause of death in the world. New therapeutic targets are being identified because of emerging insights into disease mechanisms, and new strategies are being tested, possibly leading to new treatment options. Improving diagnosis is also crucial, because by detecting disease early, the focus could be shifted from treatment to prevention (Barliya T. PhD 2013). According to the World Health Organization in 2008, there has been an estimation of more than 17 million people who have already died from heart disease.
While heart diseases are the number killer in most of the industrialized nations, the cost of health care has risen to billions of dollars. This is also in accord with wages lost due to people who had heart diseases and could no longer work. Because of new research using nanotechnology, robotics, biotechnology, and stem cells, new parts of the cardiovascular system can now be created in a lab. Nanotechnology offers several tools and advantages in cardiovascular science, which are in the areas of diagnosis, imaging, and tissue engineering (Barliya T. PhD 2013).
Nanotechnology is being used in the treatment of heart valves that are defective, and the detection of arterial plaque. By using the nanotechnology, researchers can get a better understanding of how heart tissue works in both healthy and damaged organs. Quoting Dr. Tal Dvir: ” Many current experimental approaches to heart attack involve supplying growth factors, drugs, stem cells and other therapeutic agents to the scarred, dying tissue. Some of these compounds, such as periostin and neuregulin, have been shown in animal models to enhance heart regeneration and improve cardiac function.
However, the existing delivery approaches are all invasive, involving direct injections into the heart, catheter procedures, or surgical placement of implants that release the necessary NANOTECHNOLOGY AND UNDERSTANDING ITS CONCEPTS IN MEDICINE factors. The ultimate goal is to have the particles release compounds that promote regeneration. One approach is to release factors that attract the patient’s own stem cells, avoiding the need for tissue-engineered patches. But to date, no one’s gotten stem cells to differentiate efficiently into cardiomyocytes. ”
As we have looked at different aspects of nanotechnology and its concept in medicine, let us look at where it and when it started. In 2001, Given Imaging introduced the first steps in using nanotechnology by introducing the PillCam. The PillCam is a small camera that contains a light that is capsule-shaped, just like a regular pill. The patient swallows this camera and images are beamed wirelessly in a pill-like capsule that can be used for diagnostic purposes. This new concept is being used instead of the traditional endoscopy, where the patient has to have a tube with a camera and flashlight, which the patient needs to swallow.
While the new idea of using a PillCam may seem like a good idea, there is a drawback. The PillCam, at about the size of a normal pill, is ideal for use in the passageways of the gastrointestinal system since it can be swallowed. However, the digestive system is comprised of relatively large pathways compared to those of the arteries and capillaries, which can be as small as a few micrometers in diameter. The PillCam is thus still too large to travel through the entire circulatory system.
Additionally, the device lacks a means of navigating itself through the body; it merely travels passively along the natural course of the digestive system. (Kainic, J. 2013). In order to explore areas like the circulatory system, new means of coming up with a smaller devices had to be created so they could propel themselves against the bloodstream. To overcome this problem, scientists came up with the idea of using magnets in place the motors that propelled the PillCam. NANOTECHNOLOGY AND UNDERSTANDING ITS CONCEPTS IN MEDICINE
The PillCam is about the size of a large pill and an be swallowed. Courtesy of afutured. com Dr. Sylvain Martel, the founder and director of the NanoRobotics Laboratory at the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, and his team have developed microcarriers that are able to pass through the larger arteries. (Kainic, J. 2013). With this new concept, it will make it easier on patients to undergo certain tests that would have normally been uncomfortable. This also makes it easier for doctors to get a better idea of what goes in inside the body as well as outside.
As Martel notes in an article in IEEE Magazine, “There is no shortage of possibilities… a real-life fantastic voyage is just beginning. ” References: http://mritechnicianschools. net/2010/25-ways-nanotechnology-is-revolutionalizing-medicine/ http://nano. cancer. gov/learn/ http://www. nano. gov/nanotech-101/what/definition http://www. nanotechproject. org/inventories/medicine/ http://pharmaceuticalintelligence. com/2013/03/04/nanotechnology-and-heart-disease/ http://www. yalescientific. org/2013/02/microbots-using-nanotechnology-in-medicine/