The new study - Nanomedicine - Global Developments and Growth Opportunities - has predicted nanomedicine's prospects in the healthcare industry shows great potential, signified by pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical and drug delivery company interest, says the publisher Technical Insights.
Nanomedicine integrates technology, biology and medicine using tools and materials constructed from molecular and atomic-sized particles too small to seen with a conventional laboratory microscope.
"Nanomedicine holds the promise of site-specific therapeutic action and consequently, fewer side effects," notes Rajaram Sankaran, Technical Insight industry analyst. "Such site-specificity holds the promise of a better risk-benefit ratio and thus enhances the prospects for nanomedicine applications."
Nanocrystal technology, for instance, is being used in drug formulation and the new chemical entities screening in the discovery phase of drug development. Quantum dot particles are being applied in high-content drug screening and in the detection of breast cancer cells among others.
Medical applications for nanoparticles will focus on cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimers. Nanoprobes using quantum dots chemically bound to particular genes and proteins that can rapidly analyse biopsy tissue from cancer patients to monitor the effectiveness of drug therapy, or utilized as "smart bombs" to deliver controlled amounts of drugs into genetically classified tumour cells.
The report was quick to warn that despite its potential, nanomedicine still faces its own set of issues. Scalability is one of its biggest technological challenges. While large-scale production makes better economic sense, this is likely to be a complex task, especially when manufacturing three-dimensional nanostructures as compared to stand-alone or two-dimensional layer-shaped nanosurfaces.
This difficulty is attributed to the manufacturing standards for nanomaterials and components that are yet to evolve. Therefore, there is an urgent need for standardized manufacturing techniques; only then can nanotechnology become ubiquitous in everyday applications.