Nanomedicine arrives

Nanotechnology - one of the most exciting developments in modern science,¹ - involves the synthesis, characterisation and manipulation of atoms and molecules with dimensions of the order of 1-100 nm ( Fig 1), and the exploitation of their resulting new properties. It is an interdisciplinary field, calling on the expertise of chemists, physicists and biologists. From the point of view of chemistry, nanoscale objects are quite large. Chemists are used to manipulating covalent bonds, which are  ca 0.15 nm in length. To make a molecule just 1 nm in size, chemists combine several bonds in a controlled way. One of the key challenges facing chemists, therefore, is to develop simple, efficient ways of synthesising and assembling well-defined structures with nanoscale dimensions. ² Advances in physics, such as electron microscopy, have enabled researchers to visualise and study nanoscale systems, while biology is itself a nanoscale science. Many of the key building blocks in Nature, such as proteins, DNA and membranes all have nanoscale dimensions and are thus potentially ideal for use in nanotechnology. Not surprisingly, therefore, nanomedicine is becoming one of the most promising and rapidly developing areas of nanotechnology.^3,4