Conventional diagnostic tools often cannot detect many cancers, Alzheimer’s and other life-threatening diseases early enough to provide effective treatment. But nanotechnology, which is revolutionizing electronics and other fields, promises to similarly transform medicine, particularly when it comes to identifying illnesses more quickly.
In medicine, nanotechnology—the engineering of systems at the atomic or molecular scale to build devices that are exquisitely small—allows researchers to develop supersensitive materials composed of nanoparticles that are capable of recognizing disease markers at much lower concentrations than today’s equipment can detect, meaning diseases can be caught and treated much earlier.“Nanotechnology is changing the way the medical diagnostics field approaches disease detection," says Dr. Chad A. Mirkin, director of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for Integrated Nanopatterning and Detection Technologies at Northwestern University. “The science has led to technology that has huge advantages in terms of detection, with highly sensitive ways of screening for diseases."
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