A nanoparticle destroys cancer with heat. Is it a drug, or is it a device? As nanomedicine therapies leave the animal lab and head for human clinical trials, it is an important distinction for regulation. A Royal Society appeal to the nanotechnology industry to disclose its safety testing procedures has fallen on essentially deaf ears […]

German precision is bringing us “nanolaser medicine,” a way to diagnose and treat or destroy individual diseased cells. In the meantime, your everyday nanomedicine is getting pretty precise: A targeted nanodrug for prostate cancer has worked well in mice, and a metal-filled nanoparticle is under development to target, diagnose, and treat brain tumors. Despite all […]

The launch of another well-pedigreed journal devoted to nanomedicine is not the only further evidence of nanomedicine’s arrival. The US National Cancer Institute’s bold new plan to put an end to lung cancer by 2015, and its significant new funding of nanomedical approaches to cancer research, clinches it. Signs that the nanomedical approach will pay […]

We reported last month on nano-engineered “zinc fingers”, amino acid protuberances that emanate from a single zinc ion that automatically bind to miscoded strands of DNA, stimulating the body’s innate repair mechanism to recode the gene correctly, thereby fixing whatever problem the bad gene was causing, without harmful side effects. If you think about it, […]