NANOMEDICINE

NANOMEDICINE

Subject: Science & tech

Context: Moderna, Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccines Work Better In Men: Study. Both of these vaccines use nanoparticles (nanoparticles) that deliver the active ingredients in them to the cells in our body.

Concept:

• Nanomedicine is the application of nanotechnology to achieve innovation in healthcare.
• It uses the properties developed by a material at its nanometric scale 10-9 m which often differ in terms of physics, chemistry or biology from the same material at a bigger scale.
• Moreover, the nanometric size is also the scale of many biological mechanisms in the human body allowing nanoparticles and nanomaterials to potentially cross natural barriers to access new sites of delivery and to interact with DNA or small proteins at different levels, in blood or within organs, tissues or cells.

Benefits

• Nanomedicine has the potential to enable early detection and prevention and to drastically improve diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of many diseases including cancer but not only.
• Overall, Nanomedicine has nowadays hundreds of products under clinical trials, covering all major diseases including cardiovascular, neurodegenerative, musculoskeletal and inflammatory.
• Enabling technologies in all healthcare areas, Nanomedicine is already accounting for approximatively 80 marketed products, ranging from nano-delivery and pharmaceutical to medical imaging, diagnostics and biomaterials.