Nanotechnology Breaks New Ground in Treatment, Prevention of Disease

摘要

Nanotechnology by definition is science, engineering, and technology conducted at the nanoscale, which is about 1 to 100 nanometers - or 100,000 times smaller than the width of a hair. To imagine technology on this scale can be mind-boggling for the average person - and it was, apparently, even for scientists up until the late 1980s, when nanotechnology research really took off. Since then scientists have found myriad applications for the technology in various fields - including engineering, materials design, and medicine, the last of which has emerged as an extremely promising field for unprecedented improvements in how patients are treated. For methods of disease prevention and treatment, technology at this scale becomes desirable particularly for treatments that can be transmitted - whether injected, ingested, or using another method - directly into the human body without causing harm to a patient or healthy tissue and organs.