Applications of nanomaterials in biomedical science

Nanotechnology is an emergent and evolving field of science. Nanotechnology simply means the development of engineered materials that have at least one of their dimensions less than 100 nanometers. Nanomaterials are of various types, and can be composed and analyzed by different methods. Nanotechnology has the capacity to improve the quality and durability of products which are synthesized by existing technologies in different fields such as electronics, textiles, aviation, optics and biomedical sciences. Focusing more on the application of nanomaterials in biomedical sciences, nanomaterials can help in various purposes such as diagnosis, delivering drugs, therapy, gene editing, vaccines, artificial implants, hyperthermia, photoablation, coating medical equipment, wound dressings and medicinal robotics. Some of the properties of nanomaterials which makes their use possible for above mentioned applications are their huge surface to volume ratio, ease of functionalizing by capping them with biocompatible materials, and their unique optical and magnetic properties. Though nanomaterials can be used for a variety of biomedical applications (as mentioned above), most of them are at the preclinical research stage and have not yet been tested directly on humans due to various hypothesized risk factors such as nanotoxicology and proposed environmental concerns. If, all these challenges are taken into consideration and due precautions are taken to overcome them, nanotechnology will scale great heights and advance the branch of biomedical sciences in near future.