Medicine has started to think smaller — specifically in the case of nanotechnology, much, much smaller.

Nanomedicine a billion times smaller than a standard meter has already saved millions of lives. But what is nanomedicine? And how does a robot, drug or fiber only 100 times bigger than a water molecule have the power to fight human disease?

What Is Nanomedicine? When Good Things Come in Really Small Packages

To effect life-saving change, nanomedicine utilizes pharmaceuticals, tissues and robots as small as cells themselves. In just one example, a research team made a nanorobot that could cut off cancer's blood supply. The itty-bitty "robot" was essentially a capsule made of DNA folded up like origami.

On the outside of the nanorobot was a protein designed to fasten itself to cancer, whether it was breast, ovarian, lung or melanoma cancer. On the inside was a single tiny but powerful thrombin molecule that, when exposed near the cancer, could cause clotting to cut off the cancer's source of nutrients and oxygen without hurting the person with cancer. In the study published in Nature Biotechnology, the host human's blood and brain remained clot-free.

In theory, a nanorobot with an anchoring protein made from a certain cancer could swim around, latch onto that cancer everywhere it was found in the body and, no matter how small the metastasis, eliminate all current disease, radically decreasing the odds of future disease.

Size Sometimes Matters

Like human cells, nanotechnology in medicine varies in scale depending on its target and function. At 30 nanometers (nm) a human skin cell is about a million times smaller than a grain of salt at 0.5 millimeters. A red blood cell is 8 nm in diameter on average. The messenger RNA (mRNA) that made up the COVID-19 vaccines? Each cell-soluble package of instructions for identifying variants of COVID-19 is about 500 nm in diameter, and every vaccine dose contains many lipid-based molecule packages of mRNA.

Likewise, nanorobots vary in size depending on where they are designed to go and what they are designed to do and carry with them. Nanofibers follow the same principle. According to a study in Int J Nanomedicine, to prevent rejection of donor tissue and eliminate waiting lists for organs, humans could have their own cells harvested and grown on a matrix of nanofibers that act as a scaffold. When the organ or tissue in question is finished, the fibers would be cued to degenerate, leaving only the patient's new bladder, bowel, cornea or Achilles tendon behind.

In other words, using nanotechnology in medicine, not only could organs and tissues be potentially replaced wholesale, but with nanofibers, new cartilage could be induced to grow over surfaces that have worn out, decreasing the need for some types of joint replacements.

Delivering Medicine to the Source

By replacing organs and tissues, nanotechology in medicine can be a bit larger than the bacteria it's trying to kill — but it can also be smaller or just about the same size. As published in Cureus, a recent systematic review of nanotechnology applications in the control of sepsis, a deadly condition leading to multi-organ failure, determined that nanotechnology can help save human life and improve health in numerous ways.

The review determined that nanosensors can quickly and accurately detect the presence of elevated blood markers of illness and that nanoformulations — highly specific drug therapy targeted at the exact bacteria causing disease in a particular patient — could be more beneficial, faster-acting and less harmful than antibiotics designed to wipe out whatever bacteria they find.

While conducting targeted therapy to cure disease, these nanomedicines could also deliver anti-inflammatory medication to prevent our bodies from overreacting to the presence of the foreign, harmful bacteria. All the while, nanoformulations would spare the bacteria that live in our gut, helping the digestion of food, the absorption of nutrients and the maintenance of health and hygiene.

Downsizing and Scaling at the Same Time

Though the practical applications and possibilities of nanomedicine are vast, with the exception of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, implementation has been slow. Despite this slow progress on the implementation side, the ever-growing field of tiny medical technology is rapidly evolving as a whole, and it promises a bright future where the biggest health concerns can be solved with the smallest tools.

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