Nanotechnology is dedicated to the control and manipulation of matter at a scale lower than 1 micron (1,000 times smaller than a millimeter), to create materials, systems and even minirobots (nanobots) with unique properties, capable of performing almost any function. They imagine taking a pill that contains an army of molecular-sized nanobots, programmed to enter the cells of their body and fight the viruses, repair genetic alterations, eliminate harmful molecules, etc. Well…. It is possible thanks to nanomedicine and all equipment that derives from it, like electrospinning machines which specialize in the creation of nanobots.
Currently, nanomedicine has focused on the prevention and treatment of pathologies with great impact on the population such as oncological, cardiovascular, neurodegenerative diseases, etc., obtaining more than encouraging results.
ONCOLOGICAL DISEASES
In the field of oncology, the use of nanomedicine has focused on two major problems in any type of cancer: diagnosis and side effects of chemotherapy.
The early diagnosis of cancer greatly increases the chances of cure. One of the main uses of nanomedicine in this field is the possibility of detecting circulating tumor cells in the blood or in different tissues in early stages of disease development. In this sense, studies carried out in animal models have revealed that magnetic nanoparticles related to tumor markers can correctly detect cancer even when the levels of these markers were well below the levels detectable with the methods currently used.
Chemotherapy is a very aggressive treatment based on the destruction of cancer cells, which has multiple associated side effects as it also eliminates healthy cells. Recently, a group of European researchers published the creation of nanospheres that contained an essential component for the activation of the drug and that were able to be introduced only in cancer cells. This brilliant idea allowed that when the chemotherapy was applied, only the drug was activated in those cells in which the microspheres (cancer cells) had been introduced without affecting the rest of the cells and avoiding the side effects of the chemotherapy.
CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASES
In relation to cardiovascular diseases, many utilities have also been described, one of the most important results was the possibility of identifying atherosclerotic lesions (serious injuries in the vascular system) at very early stages. There are even studies in which nanoparticles are able to administer drugs in the affected areas in a specific way.
NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASES
Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by a progressive and irreversible neuronal death. It has been described that a possibility of generating neurons is through the differentiation of existing stem cells in the brain through different growth factors. However, if the growth factors were injected into the bloodstream they could be picked up by a tissue other than the brain. This problem could also be solved thanks to nanomedicine, a group of Spanish researchers are developing nanoparticles that through the specific recognition of molecules present only in brain stem cells could discharge the growth factors in the desired area.
These are just some examples of the potential of nanomedicine. The use of this technique in the clinical routine is still a utopia, however, the promising results collected in different studies make nanomedicine one of the most hopeful variants of new technological advances in medicine, aspiring to become a fundamental tool in what we now call modern medicine. As the visionary Jules Verne said “Everything a person can imagine, others can make it happen”.
