The health care industry is predicted to receive the first significant benefits of nanotechnology. The driving force behind this prediction is that biological structures are within the size scale that researchers are now able to manipulate and control.
Investigators are looking to nanotechnology to develop highly sensitive disease detectors, drug delivery systems that only target the disease and not the surrounding healthy tissue, and nanoscale building blocks that help repair skin, cartilage, and/or bone.
The U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative has identified the detection, diagnosis and treatment of disease as “grand challenges” for nanotechnology.