Application areas of molecular communication

Abstract

We began this book with a short example about targeted drug delivery, an important application area for molecular communication; we now elaborate on this significant and motivating example for molecular communication. We also discuss other potential application areas of molecular communication, such as tissue engineering, lab-on-a-chip technology, and unconventional computation. For each application area, we start with a brief introduction to the area and describe potential application scenarios where bio-nanomachines communicate through molecular communication to achieve the goal of an application. We then describe in detail selected designs of molecular communication systems as well as experimental results in the area. Drug delivery Drug delivery provides novel methodologies for drug administration that can maximize the therapeutic effect of drug molecules [1,2]. One goal of drug delivery is to develop drug delivery carriers that can carry and deliver drug molecules to a target site in a body. Such drug delivery carriers are made from synthetic or natural particles (e.g., pathogens or blood cells) and they are typically nano to micrometer in size, so they can be injected into the circulatory system to propagate in a body. Targeting of drug delivery carriers in a body can be performed by exploiting pathological conditions that appear at a target site (e.g., tumor tissues). For instance, tumor tissues develop small gaps between nearby endothelial cells in a blood vessel, so drug delivery carriers, if small enough, can propagate through the gaps to accumulate in the tumor tissues.