Jan 22 2015
Nanomedicine has been developing rapidly in recent years, particularly in the development of novel nano tools for medical diagnosis and treatment. For instance, a new trend is becoming prevalent in developing nanosystems for simultaneous tumor diagnosis and therapy.
This requires high versatility of the nanocarriers with multiple functionalities of cell targeting, drug storage, optical imaging, and effective means of treatment such as magnetic and photothermal hyperthermia, photodynamic therapy, and drug release via various intelligent mechanisms (pH, temperature, and biochemical variations in the tumor environment).
A new terminology "theranosics" has been frequently used and applied in pre-clinical research and trials. A nanosystem can simultaneously achieve both cell targeted in vivo imaging and photothermal treatment of cancer. While achieving concurrent high spatial and temporal resolution of the lesions via cell targeting; special non-evasive treatments are implemented at the same time by various means, such as localized drug release, hyperthermia, and photo-thermal therapy.
Inspired by these challenging problems in biomedical fields, the development of the nanotechnologies will be the key in addressing some of the critical issues in medicine, especially in early cancer diagnosis and treatment.
In this book published by World Scientific, Bio-inspired Nanomaterials and Devices summarizes the most recent developments in nanomaterials, biotechnology, and medical diagnosis and therapy in a comprehensive fashion for researchers from diverse fields of chemistry, materials science, physics, engineering, biology, and medicine. Not only does the book touch up on the most fundamental topics of nanoscience, but also deal with critical clinical issues of translational medicine.
The book is written in a straightforward and tutorial fashion, typically suitable for technical non-specialists. All chapters are written by active researchers in frontier research of nanobiomedicine. This book will provide timely and useful information for the progress of nanomaterials and biomedical applications.