الفهرس 
Nanotechnology & Nanomedicine:Only 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Nanotechnology (the Greek word nano means ‘dwarf’) is the study, creation and utilization of materials, devices, and systems through the control of matter on the nanometer length scale, i.e., at the level of atoms, molecules, and supramolecular structures (A nanometer (nm) is one billionth of a meter “10 –9 m”).
Nanomedicine involves utilization of nanotechnology for the benefit of human health and well-being. The use of nanotechnology in various sectors of therapeutics has revolutionized the field of medicine where nanoparticles of dimensions ranging between 1 and 100 nm are designed and used for diagnostics and therapeutics and as biomedical tools for research.
The use of nanotechnology in medicine offers some exciting possibilities. Some techniques are only imagined, while others are at various stages of testing, or actually being used today. The ability to structure materials and devices at the molecular scale can bring enormous immediate benefits in the research and practice of medicine. In general, miniaturization of our medical tools will provide more accurate, more controllable, more versatile, more reliable, more cost-effective, and faster approaches to enhancing the quality of human life.
Various nanotechnology platforms like liposomes, fullerenes, nanotubes, quantum dots, nanopores, dendrimers, liposomes, paramagnetic nanoprobes, and radio controlled nanoparticles are being developed and used nowdays.
There are many aspects of nanotechnological applications in medical therapeutics as passive & active drug targeting, gene therapy and implanted drug delivery devices. On the other hand nanotechnology enables further refinement of diagnostic techniques, leading to high throughput screening; in-vitro diagnostic tool can be a single biosensor, or an integrated device containing many biosensors. In-vivo diagnostics refers in general to imaging techniques, but also covers implantable devices.
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. These so-called nanotheranostics are designed to facilitate several important aspects of drug delivery research, including e.g. the longitudinal assessment of the pharmacokinetics, the biodistribution and the target site accumulation of a given formulation, and the non-invasive visualization and quantification of drug release. In addition, by enabling patient preselection and treatment monitoring, nanotheranostics can be used for personalizing nano-chemotherapeutic interventions.
There are many current applications of nanomedicine in otorhinolaryngology such as the use of self-assembling peptide to control cerebrovascular bleeding which can be useful for controlling epistaxis or bleeding during endoscopic sinus surgery, the development of a nanoparticulate carrier of amphotericin B to allow controlled delivery and reduced toxicity of antifungal agent which can be used in fungal sinusitis, and also the targeted drug delivery to inner ear which can open new era for dealing with inner ear diseases. Nanomedicine also can be useful in imaging, staging, and treatment of head &neck cancers.
In the coming years, nanotechnology will play a key role in the medicine of tomorrow providing revolutionary opportunities for early disease detection, diagnostic and therapeutic procedures to improving health and enhancing human physical abilities, and enabling precise and effective therapy tailored to the patient.