Recent scientific advancements and the global initiatives to support nanotechnology and nano-medicine research give the hope that the innovative products from the area of nano-biomedical technology will revolutionize the modern medicine very soon.

Though the field of drug delivery is a direct beneficiary of these advancements, there are practical issues in the manufacturing and biological application of particles, said Dr M Rajaram, vice-chancellor, Anna University, Tamil Nadu.

He was delivering the presidential address at the Nanobio Collaborative International Conference-2013 at the BIT campus of the university at Tiruchirappalli.

According to him, nano-biomedical technology is an interdisciplinary science which will act as the key for the 21st century medical and technological progress, whereas, its success depends on the continued innovations and culmination of research efforts from the natural sciences, medicine, engineering and allied disciplines.  It has the power to break boundaries that exist between traditional area of science, agriculture, medicine and engineering.  By the end of the 20th century, the use of biotechnology in medicine and pharmacy was realized with new microbiological products and new materials (polymers) for pharmaceutics, biomedicine and organ transplantation. Now in the 21st century, we are much more enthusiastic about outlooks of nano-technologies for our life and environment, he said.

“Fast developing nano-biomedical technology is expected to have a dramatic impact on medicine. The application of nano-biomedical technology for treatment, diagnosis, monitoring, and control of biological systems has recently been established. Among the approaches for exploiting nanotechnology developments in medicine, various nano-particulates offer some unique advantages as pharmaceutical delivery systems and image enhancement agents. Several varieties of nano-particles are available today with different polymeric and metal nano-particles, liposome, micelles, quantum dots, dendrimers, microcapsules, cells, cellghosts, lipoproteins, and many different nano-assemblies. All of these nano-particles can play a major role in diagnosis and therapy,” the vice-chancellor said.

The paradigm of using nano-particulate pharmaceutical carriers to enhance the in-vivo efficiency of many drugs, anti-cancer drugs were well established itself over the past decade both in pharmaceutical research and clinical setting, and does not need any additional proof.  Numerous nano-particle-based drug delivery and drug targeting systems are currently developed or under development.  Their use aims to minimize drug degradation upon administration, prevent undesirable side effects, and increase drug bioavailability and the fraction of the drug accumulated in the pathological area.

In order for our society to realize the awe-inspiring potential for revolutionary changes which nano-biomedical technology promises in every industry from transportation to pharmaceuticals, complex issues involved in this interdisciplinary research must be addressed and should be managed at the highest levels of leadership in both the public and private sector through collaborations and memorandum of understandings (MoU) and exchange programs.

The vice-chancellor said Anna University has received proposal from Nano-medicine Research Centre of the University of South Florida to initiate a PG level interdisciplinary degree programme with specialization in Nano-medicine and Nano-pharmacy. The proposal includes exchange of students and faculties for performing advanced research in specified areas of nano-biomedical research in association with Anna University, Chennai. An MoU in this regard will be signed soon.