The use of nanomedicines could revolutionize the way we detect and treat damage to the human body and diseases in the future. Over the coming years, the benefits of nanomedicine and new diagnostic tools will be felt by an increasing no. of patients with significant impact on global health. Kepika Thapa
Full Answer
What is Nanomedicine and how can it help prevent disease?
Nanomedicine, understood as nanotechnology applications for medical problems, has the potential of preventing diseases and illnesses before they start instead of simply treating an ailment. There are three main areas where nanotechnology is helping right now in prevention efforts.
How can nanotechnology be used to prevent disease?
There are three main areas where nanotechnology is helping right now in prevention efforts. Nanotechnology applications in monitoring diseases or patients, antimicrobial coatings to prevent microorganisms to proliferate in foods and packages, and nanofilters to weed out, at the nano scale, chemical and microbial contaminants.
Can we combine diagnosis and therapy within a single nanomedicine formulation?
Interdisciplinary research on nanomedicine formulations, on disease diagnosis and on disease treatment has brought about a number of efforts to combine diagnosis and therapy within a single nanomedicine formulation.
What is the future of nanomedicine for CVDs?
Nanomedicine presents unique advantages over conventional medicines due to the superior properties intrinsic to nanoscopic therapies. Once used mainly for cancer therapies, recently, tremendous progress has been made in nanomedicine that has led to an overall improvement in the treatment and diagnosis of CVDs.
How can nano technology be used in the prevention and treatment of illnesses?
Nanotechnology is already leading to dramatic improvements in health care. Scientists are using nanoparticles to target tumors, in drug delivery systems, and to improve medical imaging. Some nanoparticle-based treatments are multi-functional; they can both find tumors and carry drugs for treatment.
What are the risks of nanotechnology for medical diagnosis and treatment?
Nanoparticles can get into the body through the skin, lungs and digestive system. This may help create 'free radicals' which can cause cell damage and damage to the DNA. There is also concern that once nanoparticles are in the bloodstream they will be able to cross the blood-brain barrier.
How can nanomedicine change the future of medicine?
In in vivo diagnostics, nanomedicine could develop devices able to work inside the human body in order to identify the early presence of a disease, to identify and quantify toxic molecules, tumor cells.
What are the benefits of nanomedicine?
The continued development of nanomedicines has the potential to provide numerous benefits, including improved efficacy, bioavailability, dose–response, targeting ability, personalization, and safety compared to conventional medicines.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using nanotechnology in medicine?
Nanotechnology offers the potential for new and faster kinds of computers, more efficient power sources and life-saving medical treatments. Potential disadvantages include economic disruption and possible threats to security, privacy, health and the environment.
What are the disadvantages of nanotechnology to the fields of medicine?
Some of the disadvantages of nanotechnology are: (a) It is very expensive and its developing cost is high; (b) Its manufacturing is difficult [1-4]. The usage of nanotechnology in different areas of medicine is called nanomedicine.
How can nanotechnology be used in the prevention and treatment of illnesses Brainly?
Today, the nanotechnology is widely used to improve targeted immune responses to the prevention and treatment of infectious and non-infectious diseases. Localised nano immunotherapy through the reduction of systemic toxicity improves the immunostimulatory molecules [7].
How can nanotechnology improve medical diagnostics and imaging?
Nanomaterials are increasingly used in diagnostic, imaging, and targeted drug delivery applications. Nanotechnology promises to facilitate the development of personalized medicine, in which patient therapy is tailored by the patient's individual genetic and disease profile.
What is the impact of nanomedicine on society?
Nanodiagnostics will improve the sensitivity and extend the present limits of molecular diagnostics/molecular imaging of various diseases [1]; Nanotechnology can be integrated in detection of biomarkers, point-of-care devices, biochips and biosensors.
What is the primary goal of nanomedicine?
The ultimate goal of nanomedicine is to achieve robust targeted delivery of complex assemblies that contain sufficient amount of multiple therapeutic and diagnostic agents for highly localized drug release with no adverse side effects and reliable detection of site-specific therapeutic response.
What is nanomedicine and how does it work?
In nanomedicine, scientists are creating materials and devices that work with your body at the atomic or molecular level. This allows for very specific, targeted results and has the potential to limit side effects.
How is nanomedicine used today?
Currently, the most active areas of nanomedical research and product development are in cancer treatments, imaging contrast agents, and biomarker detection. Although many nanotherapeutics and nanodiagnostics are already in use, there are many barriers that impede bringing nanomedical products to market.
How Nanomedicine can change the future of medicines
Nanomedicine is a branch of medicine that applies the knowledge and tools of nanotechnology to the prevention and treatment of disease. Nanomedicine involves the use of nanoscale materials, such as biocompatible nanoparticles and nanorobots, for diagnosis, delivery, sensing or actuation purposes in a living organism.
How does a Nanomedicine works ?
Nanomedicine is simply the application of nanotechnologies in a healthcare setting and the majority of benefits that have already been seen involve the use of nanoparticles to improve the behavior of drug substances.
Applications of nanomedicine
Drug delivery: Nanomedicines can play an important role in ensuring enough of the drug enters the body, that drug that does enter stays in the body for long periods and is targeted specifically to the areas that need treatment.
How can nanotechnology be used to monitor a patient's health?
In these applications nanotechnology can successfully be used to monitor a patient’s health. Many applications under development will allow (some already do) to quantify different health markers such as blood pressure, blood levels of sugars, hormones, and antibodies, body temperature, heart functioning–all at one point in time and without the need for the patient to go to a lab or to leave blood samples. Additionally, by using nano-technolgical systems it is possible to measure hundreds of complicated factors at the same time, avoiding the risk of losing samples waiting days for lab results, and lab mess-ups. At a not so distant point in the future the information could be sent wirelessly to a computer in the doctor’s office
How is nanotechnology helping?
There are three main areas where nanotechnology is helping right now in prevention efforts. Nanotechnology applications in monitoring diseases or patients, antimicrobial coatings to prevent microorganisms to proliferate in foods and packages, and nanofilters to weed out, at the nano scale, chemical and microbial contaminants.
What is the purpose of antimicrobial coatings?
Antimicrobial coatings is another promising area for preventing diseases. Antimicrobial coatings can significantly reduce the ability of bacteria and viruses to stick to surfaces that may be in contact with body fluids during surgical procedures.
What is nanotechnology?
Nanotechnology, the science of studying and manufacturing systems at the nanometer (1 nanometer = 1 billionth of a meter) level, has the potential to start a revolution in healthcare. One of the most promising areas of nanotechnology for healthcare is that of prevention, which is stopping diseases and illnesses before they occur, ...
Why are nano filters used?
Such nano filters are already used today in the fight against diseases such as SARS and to prevent medical staff from getting infected in hospitals and clinics.
Is prevention more cost efficient than reactive medicine?
In addition, many studies have established that prevention is more cost-efficient than reactive medicine.
What is nanomedicine? What are its applications?
Nanomedicine is the use of nanotechnology for healthcare with clinical applications ranging from disease diagnosis to formulation of carriers for drug and gene delivery applications. Use of nanotechnology-based delivery vehicles, such as nanoparticles, nanocapsules, micelles, or dendrimers, has emerged as a promising strategy to deliver conventional drugs, recombinant proteins, vaccines, and, more recently, genetic material by addressing the problems related to poor solubility, high toxicity, nonspecific delivery, in vivo degradation, and short circulation half-lives of the conventional drugs, which often limits optimal dosage at the target site. The rapidly growing nanomedicine industry not only caters to the treatment of various diseases including cancer, pain, asthma, multiple sclerosis, and kidney diseases but also helps in differentiating normal and diseased cells. Metallic, polymeric, semiconductor, and magnetic nanoparticles have been employed in engineering nanostructures that are increasingly being employed for disease diagnosis. While the unique optical, magnetic, and size-dependent properties of nanoparticles make them suitable candidates for disease diagnosis, their ability to undergo surface modification with polymers, antibodies, or aptamers helps in increasing their circulation time and reduces their potential toxicity. Conjugation of these nanoparticles with aptamers has been utilized for development of sensors with fluorescence, optical, and electrochemical detection signals which are sensitive, highly specific, reusable, and label-free. Nanostructures have improved medical diagnosis by providing inexpensive, reproducible, sensitive, and highly specific methods for disease diagnosis either in terms of sensors or as imaging agents. Nanomedicine not only includes the fields of therapeutics and diagnostics but also involves development of implantable materials and devices. Despite the innumerable advantages of nanostructures in the field of nanomedicine, only a handful of products have been able to reach the market due to several disadvantages that these magic bullets are associated with including toxicity of the said materials. However, maintenance of a balance between the advantages and disadvantages would definitely open up avenues for personalized medicine through therapeutics, diagnostics, and theranostics. The present chapter discusses the current state-of-the-art materials used in nanomedicine for disease diagnosis or treatment, problems associated with them, and future prospects of nanomedicine toward personalized medicine.
Why are nanoparticles useful?
While the unique optical, magnetic, and size-dependent properties of nanoparticles make them suitable candidates for disease diagnosis, their ability to undergo surface modification with polymers, antibodies, or aptamers helps in increasing their circulation time and reduces their potential toxicity.
What is nanomedicine? What are its functions?
Nanomedicine is one of the most important fields of science that has played a substantial role in the development of the novel technology to tackle the problems associated with disease treatment and diagnosis. Several nanocarriers are under investigation to improve the conventional drug delivery systems to effectively target drug releases, low dose, reduced toxicity, improved permeability, and controlled release of the drug. Moreover, nanomedicine has also performed significant parts in creating point-of-care testing to tackle infectious diseases like COVID 19. Cyclodextrin-based Remdesivir formulation is one of the great success of nanomedicine in the treatment of COVID 19 infection. Additionally, plasmonic nanoparticle (Gold, silver, and its hybrid nanostructure) exert anti-infective activity against COVID 19 and has played a vital role in the development of point-of-care diagnostic tests for its detection. Hence, nanomedicine has provided crucial support to manage the COVID 19 pandemic crisis.
What are the benefits of polymeric nanoparticles?
Polymeric nanoparticles enable the safe in-vivo administration of the drug molecules with its unique properties such as improved safety and ef ficacy , controlled drug release and targeted drug delivery ( Kumari et al., 2017; Verma et al., 2017b, 2018b; Paul et al., 2018 ). It also reduces the high dose-related side effects and permeability across the cellular membrane due to its nano-size properties. This beneficial effect of the polymeric nanoparticle can be utilized for drug delivery to revive the existing drug to treat the SARS-CoV-2 infection. Zhang et al. (2020), have developed the poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) polymer-based nanosponge to tackle SARS-CoV-2 Infectivity. Mainly, human lung epithelial type II cells and human macrophages membrane-coated nanosponge was fabricated with PLGA as the inner core material which shares the same cellular physiology required for the entry of SARS-CoV-2 into host cells. This artificial cellular nanosponge acts as a receiving target for SARS-CoV-2 during incubation where it becomes neutralized and unable to infect the host cells ( Kumari et al., 2018 ). In this way, the polymeric nanoparticle is a potential nanocarrier system to deliver drugs to treat SARS-CoV-2 infection.
What are silver nanoparticles used for?
It has been used in the treatment of wound dressing and burn care products. Moreover, silver has recorded anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, antiplatelet, anti-angiogenesis antifungal, and antibacterial activities. Additionally, silver nanoparticles are under investigation for viricidal effects. Coronavirus has been found to adhere to surfaces and remains there for around 12 h where the silver-based anti-infective coating can neutralize the virus ( Rai et al., 2009; Balagna et al., 2020 ), studied the anti-infective property of silver by developing the Silver nanocluster-silica composite coated facial mask that exerts a viricidal effect against SARS-CoV-2. This coating can be applied to metallic, glass and ceramic surfaces, so it has vast importance and beneficial application for safety in crowded places like supermarkets, hospitals, and schools to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2 ( Balagna et al., 2020 ). There are several multifunctional metal nanoparticle/hybrid structures that were explored to limit the range of SARS-CoV-2 through their anti-infective properties as shown in Table 1.
What drugs are used to treat a virus?
To date, there is no standard therapy for the treatment and doctors have tried many methods to manage the symptoms with existing drug molecules such as Chloroquine, Hydroxychloroquine, Ribavirin, Favipiravir, Galidesivir, thalidomide, Emtricitabine, Tenofovir, Baricitinib, Remdesivir, Ruxolitinib, Darunavir, Camostat, Fingolimod, Umifenovir, Lopinavir, and Ritonavir. These drug molecules often suffer from poor solubility, permeability, and lack of targetability that leads to failure in exerting the desired therapeutic effect ( Chauhan et al., 2020; Shah et al., 2020) Nanotechnology has proven its role in medicine to deliver the drug at the target site with minimal side effects. Several nanotechnology-based products are currently on the market and are under clinical investigation.
Nanomedicine
- Nanotechnology, the science of studying and manufacturing systems at the nanometer (1 nanometer = 1 billionth of a meter) level, has the potential to start a revolution in healthcare. One of the most promising areas of nanotechnology for healthcare is that of prevention, which is stopping diseases and illnesses before they occur, even before they s...
Monitoring Applications
- In these applications nanotechnology can successfully be used to monitor a patient’s health. Many applications under development will allow (some already do) to quantify different health markers such as blood pressure, blood levels of sugars, hormones, and antibodies, body temperature, heart functioning–all at one point in time and without the need for the patient to g…
Nanofilters
- An easy way to prevent medical issues is to prevent contact and exposure to pathogenic bacteria and viruses. Filters are being constructed with nanopores. These nanofilters are able to remove the smallest of the known viruses. Such nano filters are already used today in the fight against diseases such as SARS and to prevent medical staff from getting infected in hospitals and clinics.
Antimicrobial Coatings
- Antimicrobial coatings is another promising area for preventing diseases. Antimicrobial coatings can significantly reduce the ability of bacteria and viruses to stick to surfaces that may be in contact with body fluids during surgical procedures. These coatings, built nanotechnologically, can include special microbicide agents, such as titanium dioxide nanoparticles, or silver-gold par…
The Future
- As the future becomes the present we are going to witness a revolution in healthcare. Many of these revolutionary steps will be guided by developments in the nanotechnology science. Prevention is an area where we will see many advances.