Nanotechnology and drug delivery

Approximately 99 per cent of medicinal molecules don’t reach their targets and subsequently, stay in the body of the patient. As these molecules can sometimes be very toxic – particularly in the case of those designed to target cancers – research is being undertaken into more effective ways of safely transporting and delivering drugs. A challenge for nanotechnology in this research is to create a device which can carry a drug payload to it’s target, be monitored throughout it’s journey and deliver, without being attacked and destroyed by the body’s natural defences. This calls for something which possesses stealth design characteristics and a plausible device is described here in this movie. This is one of a selection of intriguing movies which are available for free download from the EPSRC Nanotechnology Image Library at : www.nanoscience.dept.shef.ac.uk You may also be interested in navigating to the “Soft Machines” site belonging to Professor Richard Jones – who features in this movie – for up-to-date discourse on all things nano. Here’s the link : www.softmachines.org

Google Tech Talks September 12, 2006 Yi Cui is an assistant professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Stanford University. He is a recipient of the Technology Review World Top 100 Young Innovator Award. He received his PhD degree from Harvard University working with Prof. Charles Lieber. He received his BS degree from Univ of Science and Technology of China. ABSTRACT Nanowires and nanocrystals represent important nanomaterials with one-dimensional and zero-dimensional morphology, respectively. Here I will give an overview on the research about how these nanomaterials impact the critical applications in faster transistors, smaller nonvolatile memory devices, efficient…