Challenges and Optimism for Nanoengineering

Abstract

Recent advances in nanotechnology and materials science have made it possible to design and synthesize structures with nanometer-scale features that have the potential to interphase in novel and productive ways with cells and tissues. Further progress in this field in the near future will probably result in more sensitive and complex biosensors, refined drug targeting, in vivo diagnostic applications and, eventually, novel avenues for the treatment of human diseases, many of which are presently refractory to the small-molecule drugs currently available. This editorial discusses some of the prospects and main obstacles for nanomedicine. I propose that the new field of nanoengineering should turn to the nanoscale features of biology to learn how to design nanodevices for therapeutic uses. In my view, the best reason for optimism is that life has already solved the obstacles we are grappling with and produced ‘nanodevices’ with capabilities that far exceed the ones nanomedicine is hoping for. Biology could well be defined as the science of nanostructures made of predominantly carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen. Indeed, it is their subnanometer structural features that give biomolecules their properties and allow them to self-assemble into functional units with the autonomous and self-replicating properties we call ‘life’. In the last century we have come a long way in our quest to understand how biomolecules work and how their smallest errors can be associated with severe human disease. By contrast, we have not yet advanced far at all on the road to learning how to repair cellular machinery. Currently, the best avenue for therapy of human disease consists of small-molecule enzyme inhibitors – drugs, many of which are nonselective and have