Application of Nanomaterials in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Genetic Disorders

Abstract

Genetic testing is focused on identifying chromosome, gene, or protein changes between healthy and diseased cells or person. Genetic test outcomes can either verify or rule out possible genetic conditions and help determine whether a person is likely to develop or pass a genetic disorder. There are currently more than 1000 genetic testing and many more in the development pipeline. Therefore, the need to develop a susceptible and reliable method is vital in the diagnosis of genetic disorders. Nanomaterials offer a futuristic diagnosis platform for genetic diseases as it is a non-invasive, simple, portable, inexpensive diagnostic platform. Different nanomaterials have also been developed and functionlized with the target molecules to provide therapeutic selectively and for molecular imaging. For these reasons, the development of nanomaterials for the early detection of specific disease biomarkers in tiny amounts reaches to part-per-billion (ppb) levels, in real-time, with high sensitivity and selectivity and reliability is of great importance in disease diagnosis and disease progression monitoring. Such nanomaterials should have exceptionally high sensitivity and selectivity that combines the optical, magnetic, and electrical properties of nanomaterials with the biological selectivity and sensitivity toward their targets.