Few fields are as stimulating as medicine in terms of potential nanotechnology applications. Aside from being a strong dream-stimulant, several scientific and technological breakthroughs are pushing the nanofields into a future of real-life applications coming true. Check out for example the following video featuring research progress in several EU research projects, such as nanoimplants in teeth to dose medication, preventive disease detection systems, spoiled-food detection etc.

Researchers in the US and Italy succeeded in making significant progress for the development of nanoscale memory devices by looking into the interactions between organic and inorganic materials. They attached individual viruses to tiny specks of semiconducting material also known as quantum dots. Thinking in terms of potential applications, cheaper high-density hybrid memorychips but also medical nanorobots are only a step away:

such a system could eventually perhaps be used to record its journey through sites of interest in the human body – for example, diseased tissue or arteries. “In Star Trek terms, the hybrids could act like nanomachines or nanorobots built for treating disease”

On another front, advances in nanophotonics at Berkeley lead to the development of a tunable nanowire nonlinear optical probe. Besides a plethora of possible applications in telecommunication, computing and sensing, it open up medical potential for single cell endoscopy (in an estimated 10 years).

“Bio-imaging may be the field in which this nanowire light source technology has its biggest impact. Optical or visible light microscopy remains at the forefront of biological research because it allows scientists to study living cells and tissues.”

Also at Berkeley, research is taking place on a nanoscale injector that allows to inject a nanoscale cargo directly into cell tissue.

With extensions of the hand and the eye moving into the nanoscale spectrum, the dream of surgery-less medical intervention comes closer. But, Christine Peterson over at the Foresight Nanotech Institute is right when she says to be careful and temper future-oriented optimism with realism (e.g. nanorobotics and clinical trials). In every ‘visionary’ description of a plausible future, the danger lurks that early enthusiasm backfires and leads to reactions of disbelief and discouragement: ‘yeah right! another one of those …’ or ‘you promised us five years ago and still we are not even close’, etc.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 at 12:23 and is filed under envision, future, science, technology, trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.