Biomedical Nanomaterials: A Short Insight of Applications

Abstract

Nanotechnology is rapidly expanding area in the field of science that helps us to manipulate matter at the atomic and molecular level thus having varied and new properties with huge potential. It is the study of extremely small particles ranging from 1-1000 nm. This small size imparts the nanoscale devices their applications in medicine and physiology while permitting them to interact with cells and tissues at subcellular level, with bioreceptors on both the surface and inside of cell membrane thus providing a high degree of functional specificity to the systems. Nanodevices in medicine involves applications of nanoparticles, polymeric micelles, dendrimers, nanotubes, inorganic nanoparticles, nanocrystals and quantam dots which are currently under development as well as constitute the major part of longer range research. Improvement in drug solubility, high drug loading capacity, ease of surface modification, increase in blood circulation time, controlled release and highly site-specific targeted delivery are the advantages responsible for such wide applications of these nanomaterials. The applications include drug and gene delivery to specific site, delivery and detection of specific proteins, biological imaging and biosensors, DNA probing, tissue engineering, pathogens and tumor detection. This article has made an attempt to cover the few insights of nanotechnology as an interesting approach and illustrates various nanosystems along with their advantages, applications and well approved commercially available products.
 Keywords: Polymeric micelles, Dendrimers, Nanotubes, Inorganic nanoparticles, Nanocrystals and Quantam dots