Principles of Nanomedicine

Sourav Bhattacharjee, Sourav Bhattacharjee

• Publisher: Jenny Stanford Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429632051
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicina
• Subtopic: Biotecnología en medicina

The scope of nanotechnology in medical applications has expanded fast in the last two decades. With their unprecedented material properties, nanoscale materials present with unorthodox opportunities in a wide range of domains, including drug delivery and medical imaging. This book assembles the various facets of nanomedicine while discussing key issues such as physicochemical properties that enhance the appeal of nanomedicine.

The book is an excellent resource for physicians, PhDs, and postdocs involved in nanomedicine research to learn and understand the scope and complexity of the subject. It begins with a short history of nanotechnology, followed by a discussion on the fundamental concepts and extraordinary properties of nanoscale materials, and then slowly unfolds into multiple chapters illustrating the uses of various nanomaterials in drug delivery, sensing, and imaging.

Chapter 1

A Brief Historical Perspective

1.1 Introduction

Nanotechnology is now a well-established discipline in scientific research and has experienced remarkable growth over the last few decades [1]. With a changing global economic scenario, where technology is poised to take a central stage within the set social norms, including the way human beings communicate, nanotechnology emerged as the right topic at the right time while catering to the right section of the audience. Therefore, the popularity of nanotechnology was instant, and further aided by significant media attention, nanotechnology’s rise to scientific stardom was meteoric. Research literature was already buzzing by the 1990s on how much nanotechnology could offer, while sketching a splendid and, at times, surreal future that it harnessed for humanity. Nanotechnology was predicted to be the solution to most, if not all, of our current problems, including providing healthcare for an aging population [2], tackling environmental pollution [3], harnessing clean and sustainable energy [4], and providing safe potable water to millions of people in the developing world [5]. In fact, medicine was rather a less talked about application of nanotechnology in the initial stages of such hype, although things began to change by the arrival of the 21st century, when the potential of nanotechnology to revolutionize medicine became a popular topic [6]. A hybrid term between nanotechnology and medicine—nanomedicine [7]—was coined, which expectedly received immediate popularity and continues to intrigue researchers even today. An astounding number of scientific journals disseminating nanomedicine research emerged in quick succession with a surprisingly high number of research papers, reviews, commentaries, and other types of scientific publications published annually.

Principles of Nanomedicine

Sourav Bhattacharjee

Copyright © 2020 Jenny Stanford Publishing Pte. Ltd.

ISBN 978-981-4800-42-6 (Hardcover), 978-0-429-03123-6 (eBook)

www.jennystanford.com

1.2 History of Development: Conceptualization and Theoretical Framework

The foundations of nanotechnology and its fundamental principles were laid down already in the 1950s by visionaries like Prof. Richard Feynman (1918–1988, Nobel Physics laureate for 1965, Fig. 1.1). In his famous talk “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” delivered on December 29, 1959, in the California Institute of Technology (USA), Prof. Feynman predicted that scientists in the future will be able to manipulate materials at the nanoscale, including individual atoms and molecules [8]. In a nutshell, he had already conceptualized molecular machines at that time, with many projected applications. In this historical lecture, Prof. Feynman conveyed to the audience his vision of the exceptional physics of materials at nanoscale dimensions where intermolecular forces (e.g., van der Waals) begin to dominate the gravitational force [9]. Fortunately, the transcript of the entire lecture is available online now, to the delight of nanotechnology researchers and tech enthusiasts. Paradoxically enough, the lecture went rather unnoticed initially, maybe due to considerable skepticism within contemporary academia, until it was reinvented and put into the spotlight by Dr. Kim Eric Drexler (Fig. 1.2), an alumnus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), and student of Prof. Feynman, in his book Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology (1986) [10]. In this book, Dr. Drexler shared his vision for molecular machines able to manipulate and assemble atoms individually to develop novel materials. Miniaturization, as a concept, was already crystallizing and presented by Dr. Drexler, including perhaps the first mention of the Gray-goo scenario [11], which is a prophesied state where nanotech-derived tiny, molecular and self-replicating machines will bring the world to an end by multiplying uncontrollably at the expense of all living organisms (ecophagy). Today this book by Dr. Drexler enjoys a cult status. However, to be more precise, the term nanotechnology was first used before Dr. Drexler, in 1974, by Japanese scientist Prof. Norio Taniguchi (Fig. 1.2) of the Tokyo University of Science while describing atomic-scale processes in semiconductor research, for example, thin film deposition or ion beam milling to exert control at nanoscale dimensions [12].

Figure 1.1 Prof. Richard P. Feynman (1918–1988), the Nobel Physics laureate for 1965. Reproduced from Ref. [13] under a Creative Commons agreement (CC BY-SA).

Figure 1.2 (From left to right) Dr. Kim E. Drexler (US) and Prof. Norio Taniguchi (Japan)—both credited for coining the term nanotechnology. Reproduced from Refs. [14] and [15], respectively, under Creative Commons agreements (CC-BY and CC BY-SA).

Dr. Drexler is one of the pioneers in cultivating the scope of nanotechnology and invested an enormous effort in conveying its major potentials to the larger audience. In 1986, he cofounded the Foresight Institute in Paolo Alto, California, USA, which is the first not-for-profit organization to promote the development of nanotechnology [16]. Fortunately, some of the most important scientific breakthroughs, as mentioned in the following sections, were achieved at that time, which resonated and synergized well with the relentless pursuits of Dr. Drexler and his colleagues to augment the impact of nanotechnology in its initial days.

1.3 History of Development: Crucial Scientific Breakthroughs

Two major scientific inventions that sparked the development of nanotechnology were:

• The invention of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) in 1981 by physicists Drs. Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer of IBM Zurich Research Laboratory (Switzerland) (Fig. 1.3), which offered lateral imagery resolution of up to ~0.1 nm, enabling visualization of atoms and molecules [17]. This invention was a success at an unprecedented scale and deservedly received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics. In the same year (1986), the trio of Drs. Gerd Binnig, Calvin Quate, and Christoph Gerber from IBM Zurich invented the first atomic force microscope (AFM, Fig. 1.4). Today, AFM has emerged as one of the most popular tools in nanotechnology, with a broad spectrum of applications [18], and will become relevant in later sections.

  

  Figure 1.3 (From left to right) Drs. Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer—inventors of the STM in IBM Zurich and Nobel Physics laureates for 1986. Reproduced from Refs. [19] and [20], respectively, as freely available public domain material and under a Creative Commons agreement (CC BY-SA).

• The invention of fullerenes in 1985 by Drs. Harry Kroto, Richard Smalley, and Robert Curl from the Rice University (Texas, USA), which attracted the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Fullerenes, an allotrope^a of carbon, are presented with a single sheet of orderly arranged carbon atoms oriented in different geometries (Fig. 1.5), for example, spheres (buckminsterfullerenes, or buckyballs, with 60 C-atoms, i.e., C₆₀, arranged in an array of 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons), carbon nanotubes (CNTs), and flat 2D surfaces—often termed as graphene. The discovery of graphene was rewarded with the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics to Prof. Andre Gein and Dr. Konstantin Novoselov for their seminal work conducted in the University of Manchester (UK).
  ^aAllotropes are the different forms of the same element. For example, diamond, graphite, and fullerenes are all allotropes of carbon. Allotropy is seen in other elements also, like oxygen, boron, phosphorus, and sulfur.

  

  Figure 1.4 Ultra-high-resolution AFM image of the triangular molecule dehydrobenzo[12]annulene on Ag/silver (111) shown on the right while its molecular structure given on the left. Scale bar 500 pm. Re...