Bionanoscience in Health and Medicine

What is bionanoscience (or bionanotechnology)? It is the nexus where the worlds of solid state, chemistry, and biology uniteVBto boldly go where no engineer, chemist, or biologist would have gone alone.[ Broadly defined as biomedical applications of nanotechnology, it is a highly interdisciplinary field that draws upon expertise and knowledge from a host of conventional subdisciplines within engineering, chemical, and biological sciences. It is the world of the nanoscaleVat dimensions from a few nanometers to hundreds of nanometers where structures, devices, and materials are fabricated and constructed either using Btop–down[ fabrication methods with silicon manufacturing approaches, or the Bbottom–up[ self-assembly methods that are chemically or biologically inspired. Integration of these approaches can allow scientists and engineers to create devices with nanoscale features for detection or characterization of biological or chemical molecules, build new polymeric constructs for targeted drug delivery, construct hybrid materials interfacing semiconductor nanoparticles with DNA and other biomolecules with new properties, and many other possibilities yet to be realized. These new devices and materials offer many very exciting possibilities to tackle grand challenge problems facing health and medicine. Just as the last century was considered as the era of electronics and information technology, the current century could be regarded as that of biology, medicine, and health. Many grand challenge problems in health can benefit from the advancements in bionanosciences. Extensive research and development is taking place in diagnostics, therapeutics, and engineering of biological systems from molecular to tissue scale. The potential applications are many, ranging from Bbench to bedside[ (i.e., basic science to translational research) in cancer, infectious diseases, global health, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, individualized medicine, synthetic biology, and many others. Cancer, as one of the grand challenge disease, continues to take a huge toll on our society both in terms of lives and cost of disease management. Even though the average lifespan continues to be on the rise in the United States, the deaths due to cancer (about 190 deaths per 100 000) have decreased only negligibly over the last 50 years. One bold initiative is that undertaken by the National Cancer Institute Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer where researchers from a wide range of disciplines are funded to work together on applications of nanotechnology in cancer for diagnostics, therapeutics, and more, and to train the next generation of leaders to work in this critically important area for the nation and the world. As a matter of fact, according to reports from the World Health Organization, noncommunicable diseases, including cancer and heart diseases, are expected to become global epidemics and result in more death and suffering than communicable Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/JPROC.2012.2187362