Nanomedicine is the medical application of nanotechnology. Nanomedicine ranges from the medical applications of nanomaterials and biological devices, to nanoelectronic biosensors, and even possible future applications of molecular nanotechnology such as biological machines. Current problems for nanomedicine involve understanding the issues related to toxicity and environmental impact of nanoscale materials.
Nanobiotechnology, bionanotechnology, and nanobiology are terms that refer to the intersection of nanotechnology and biology. Given that the subject is one that has only emerged very recently, bionanotechnology and nanobiotechnology serve as blanket terms for various related technologies.
The impact of nanotechnology extends from its medical, ethical, mental, legal and environmental applications, to fields such as engineering, biology, chemistry, computing, materials science, and communications.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to nanotechnology:
Chad Alexander Mirkin is an American chemist. He is the George B. Rathmann professor of chemistry, professor of medicine, professor of materials science and engineering, professor of biomedical engineering, and professor of chemical and biological engineering, and director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology and Center for Nanofabrication and Molecular Self-Assembly at Northwestern University.
Izon Science Limited is a nanotechnology company that develops and sells nano-scale particle analysis and isolation tools. Their main instruments are based on principles of size exclusion chromatography and tunable resistive pulse sensing. Izon’s size-exclusion chromatography columns and related solutions are also used by diagnostics companies focused on developing extracellular vesicle biomarkers.
The applications of nanotechnology, commonly incorporate industrial, medicinal, and energy uses. These include more durable construction materials, therapeutic drug delivery, and higher density hydrogen fuel cells that are environmentally friendly. Being that nanoparticles and nanodevices are highly versatile through modification of their physiochemical properties, they have found uses in nanoscale electronics, cancer treatments, vaccines, hydrogen fuel cells, and nanographene batteries.
Tamara Minko is a distinguished professor and chair of the department of pharmaceutics at Rutgers University, Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy. She has an H-index of 43 since 2016 and over 17,800 citations of her work.
Hadiyah-Nicole Green (1981-) is an American medical physicist, known for the development of a method using laser-activated nanoparticles as a potential cancer treatment. She is one of 66 black women to earn a Ph.D. in physics in the United States between 1973 and 2012, and is the second black woman and the fourth black person ever to earn a doctoral degree in physics from The University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Mauro Ferrari is a nanoscientist and leader in the field of nanomedicine. He served as special expert on nanotechnology for the National Cancer Institute (2003-2005) and was instrumental in establishing the Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer in 2004. On 1 January 2020, Ferrari was made president of the European Research Council (ERC). Following a vote of no confidence, on 27 March 2020, "all 19 active members of the ERC’s Scientific Council individually and unanimously requested that Mauro Ferrari resign from his position as ERC’s President", due to poor conduct in office, exploiting the position to further his own projects, and for consistently failing to represent the interests of the ERC. On 7 April 2020, Ferrari officially resigned, stating to the media that he was "extremely disappointed by the European response” to the pandemic and expressing frustration over opposition to his efforts to launch a scientific program to combat the virus.
Ambika Bumb is an American biomedical scientist and businessperson. Bumb is a nanomedicine specialist who uses nanotechnology for the detection and treatment of disease. As a postdoctoral researcher at the National Cancer Institute and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Bumb made new discoveries with nanodiamonds which led to the launch of the biotech Bikanta. Bumb is currently the Deputy Executive Director at the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense.
Tessy María López Goerne is a Mexican solid-state chemist, professor, researcher, academic, and popular science communicator. She has specialized in the fields of nanotechnology and nanomedicine, as well as being a pioneer in catalytic nanomedicine. She directs the Nanotechnology and Nanomedicine Laboratories at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Xochimilco (UAM-X) plant and the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery.
Ijeoma Uchegbu is a Nigerian-British Professor of Pharmacy at University College London, where she held the position of Pro-Vice Provost for Africa and the Middle East. She is the Chief Scientific Officer of Nanomerics, a pharmaceutical nanotechnology company specialising in drug delivery solutions for poorly water-soluble drugs, nucleic acids and peptides. She is also a Governor of the Wellcome, a large biomedical research charity. Apart from her highly cited scientific research in Pharmaceutical Nanoscience, Uchegbu is also known for her work in science public engagement and equality and diversity in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). In December 2023, it was announced that she will become President of Wolfson College, Cambridge, in October 2024.
Nanoinformatics is the application of informatics to nanotechnology. It is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding nanomaterials, their properties, and their interactions with biological entities, and using that information more efficiently. It differs from cheminformatics in that nanomaterials usually involve nonuniform collections of particles that have distributions of physical properties that must be specified. The nanoinformatics infrastructure includes ontologies for nanomaterials, file formats, and data repositories.
Laurent Levy is a French physical chemist, inventor, and pioneer of nanotechnology and nanomedicine. He is the co-founder of the global biotechnology company Nanobiotix, and has served as chief executive officer (CEO) since its inception in March 2003. He also authored more than 35 international scientific publications and has applied for several patents.
Elizabeth Nance is an American chemical engineer. She has held the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professorship at the University of Washington since September 2015. Her primary research interests are "disease-directed engineering, nanomedicine-based and nanometabolic-based platform development, systems thinking to assess and model therapeutic barriers in treating disease, and biological transport phenomena".
Emily S. Day is an American biomedical engineer. She is an associate professor at the University of Delaware where her research team engineers nanoparticles to enable high precision therapy of diseases including cancers, blood disorders, and maternal/fetal health complications.
Katja Keitaanniemi is the CEO of OP Corporate Bank, which is the most significant subsidiary of OP Financial Group. According to Corporate Finance Institute, OP Corporate Bank is among the top corporate banks in Finland. Keitaanniemi has been on the list of Finland's most powerful female executives by the business weekly Talouselämä in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
Moein Moghimi is a British professor and researcher in the fields of nanomedicine, drug delivery and biomaterials. He is currently the professor of Pharmaceutics and Nanomedicine at the School of Pharmacy and the Translational and Clinical Research Institute at Newcastle University. He is also an adjoint professor at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy, University of Colorado Denver.
Lajos Peter Balogh, mainly referred to as Lou Balogh, is a Hungarian-American scientist known for his research on polymers, dendrimer nanocomposites, and nanomedicine. Balogh is the editor-in-chief of Precision Nanomedicine (PRNANO). Based on his career-long citation numbers, he belongs to the World's Top 2% Scientists.
