FDA holds public meeting on nanotechnology

Abstract

The issue of whether good things really do come in small packages formed the backdrop for FDA’s first-ever public meeting about the regulation of nanotechnology products, held October 10 in Bethesda, Maryland. “FDA recognizes that nanotechnology has a great potential to promote public health through advances in medical products,” said Randall Lutter, cochair of FDA’s 23-member nanotechnology task force. Lutter said he hoped the meeting would “increase [FDA’s] awareness of both the challenges and the opportunities that nanotechnology may provide and how we can best meet those challenges and opportunities.” A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, which is less than half the diameter of a DNA strand. The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), a program that coordinates the work of FDA and other federal agencies on nanoscale science, engineering, and technology, defines nanotechnology as “the understanding and control of matter at dimensions of roughly 1 to 100 nanometers, w here unique phenomena enable novel applications.”