Complete course notes

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Nanomedicine L A T E X notes 2021 Prof. Francesco Cellesi Giuseppe Lauricella 1 Introduction to Nanomedicine Nanomedicine is the application of nanotechnology to medicine. We'll use nanomaterials to treat certain diseases, using nanocarriers, e.g. nanoparticles ( NP ). Nanomedicine is an high interdisciplinary eld. At the nanoscale, the physical properties of material may change, and dealing with nanomedicine applications in all but trivial. When we go below the micrometric scale, some new physical eects will take place, and they will be described later on. 1.1 Nanoscale In a biological environment, human cells are in the order of 10 µ m. Around 1 µ m there are bacteria.Anything smaller than 1 µ m can be considered an aggregate of proteins. Going down, we reach the dimension of viruses. At the nanoscale we have proteins and drugs. From a biological point of view, our attention will be focused on materials below 1 µ m. Nanotechnology can be found in information technology, packaging and so on ... and of course medicine . The main topic is the use of nanomaterials for drug delivery : a colloidal particle can be injected (usually into the blood stream) and depending on its physical- chemical properties it will target a speci c organ or tissue, releasing the drug only there. "The magic bullet" eect is exactly this. It's particularly bene cal for tumors and chemother- apy, whose main disadvantages are the side eects to healthy cells. Nanocarriers are able to deliver drugs only where needed. Other applications include vaccines , to deliver RNA using nano vectors. Most of the Gene Delivery approaches are also based on this idea, delivering DNA. Another point to be considered in tissue engineering : defects can be addressed using smart materials able to repair the defect…