IJN’s second year is now a part of nanomedicine history!

IJN's second year is now a part of nanomedicine history! Welcome to the second year of the International Journal of Nanomedicine! As our readers know, nanomedicine research worldwide is going strong. As an example, the US National Science Foundation forecasts that the global market for nanotech-nology-related products and services will reach US$1 trillion by 2015 (NSF 2007). Nanomedicine may be defi ned as the monitoring, repair, construction, and control of human biological systems using engineered nanodevices and nanostructures at the molecular level. Although this defi nition still seems quite broad and all-encompassing, it is clear that this defi nition is founded on the design, synthesis, and evaluation of nanomaterials in medicine. Basic nanostructured materials, engineered enzymes, and the many products of biotechnology will be enormously useful in near-term medical applications (Foresight 2007b). One part of nanomedicine is the development of precisely controlled or program-mable medical nanomachines and nanorobots. Such microscopic machines were fi rst hypothesized by the Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman in 1959, and later were described at length by K Eric Drexler in his popular books Engines of Creation (1986) and Unbounding the Future (1991), and in his more recent technical book Nanosys-tems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation (1992) (Foresight 2007b). While we are often focused on the future of the fi eld of nanomedicine, it is equally important to consider its past. Below is a list of critical dates in the fi eld of nanotechnology, and the outgrowth of nanomedicine from nanotechnology that we must never forget (Foresight 2007a): 1959 Richard Feynman gives an after-dinner talk describing molecular machines building with atomic precision, believed to the fi rst time nanotechnology is proposed as a research initiative that could revolutionize science. 1974 Norio Taniguchi (1974) uses term " nano-technology " in paper on ion-sputter machining. 1986 The Atomic Force Microscope is invented which has subsequently allowed for unprecedented control over nanomaterial design and characterization. 1987 First university symposium " Exploring Nanotechnology " on Jan 20th at 1998 First study demonstrating increased tissue growth on nanostructures compared with currently used materials (Webster et al 1998). 2003 Congressional hearings on societal implications of nanotechnology. 2006 Refl ecting the worldwide interest in nanomedicine, the fi rst international journal in nanomedicine is created: International Journal of Nanomedicine. Welcome to the International Journal of Nanomedicine's second year, now a part of history.