Nanobiotech Pioneers Predict Nanomedicine Impact within Five Years

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 11, 2004--With nanobiotech research growing at an astounding rate -- and funds starting to follow -- what are the most promising near-term prospects for nanomedicine? Predicting which applications will have the resources -- and luck -- to succeed is a dicey proposition, experts acknowledge. But NanoBiotech News posed the questions to the field's preeminent pioneers and found that real-world applications of nanomedicine will happen within five years.

Ground-breaking nanotechnology researcher Ralph C. Merkle, Ph.D., and the father of nanomedicine Robert A. Freitas, Jr., JD, are among the industry heavyweights who weighed in with NanoBiotech News on the state of the science and where it's headed.

“The evolutionary spectrum in nanomedicine will start at the sensing and diagnostics end and move into therapeutics over time”

NanoBiotech News is the only weekly, independent news source on the business and science of nanomedicine development. A free trial subscription is available by visiting www.nanobiotechnews.com or calling [phone].

"Broadly speaking, we are entering a new era in which we can manipulate molecular structures with greater precision," Merkle tells NanoBiotech News.

In some ways, nanomedicine has already entered the clinic in the form of magnetic nanoparticles used as targeted contrast agents for MRI and optical imaging, says Erkki Ruoslahti, Ph.D., MD, professor at The Burnham Institute in La Jolla, CA.

"These show all kinds of promise, not only for diagnostics but for therapeutics," says Ruoslahti, who has conducted seminal research on targeting nanoparticles in vivo.

"The evolutionary spectrum in nanomedicine will start at the sensing and diagnostics end and move into therapeutics over time," predicts Freitas, research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing and author of Nanomedicine, the first book-length technical discussion of the medical applications of nanotechnology and medical nanorobotics.

Diagnostic applications are on a faster track simply because the clinical trials hurdles are fewer and easier, observes Jennifer West, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University in Houston and a leading researcher on the use of gold nanoshells. "Scientifically, it makes sense to go for in vitro diagnostics, such as blood tests, and we'll see some nice applications in diagnostics in the next two to five years."

Freitas adds, "Most of my work is oriented toward the longer term, but if I had to guess, the applications nearest to commercialization are probably the fullerene-related and dendrimer-related drugs," Freitas says. "The nanoshells are making their way toward commercialization, but the fullerenes and dendrimers are probably closest in terms of somebody making money from a product."

Industry observers and participants alike can stay on top of the nascent field by reading NanoBiotech News every week. Every major nanomedicine development -- from both business and scientific perspectives -- is covered in this global nanobiotechnology intelligence source.