Chapter 36 - Impact of Nanotechnology on Diagnosis and Therapy in Biomedical Industry

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the growth and impact of nanotechnology in providing a potential and desired solution which has given rise to engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) that have a wide range of applications, especially in biomedical and pharmaceutical industries such as fluorescent biological labels, biological molecular sensor and detection, tissue engineering, cancer treatment, targeted drug delivery, etc. This section of the book will cover two areas of ENM applications in biomedical and pharmaceutical industry; diagnosis and detection of dengue, and molecular sensing and targeting of cancer cells. In this chapter, we describe the etiology of cancer, the fundamental properties of cancer cells from its molecular level to the biochemical related metabolism. The chapter further focuses on the cellular cell interaction in relation to cancer and its associated environmental networking component, specifically describing the interaction/or binding of folate to overexpressing folate receptors for cancer cells sensing and selective targeting in cancer diagnosis and therapy. Lastly, we also review the current nanotechnology trends in detection of dengue and current biosensor technology. The biosensor application in clinical diagnostic may overcome the limitation of the existing dengue diagnostic, which allows the continuous monitoring, rapid response, cost-effective method, high sensitivity and selectivity, and easy operation with minimum sample preparation.