BACKGROUND AND BODY A majority of the research done with nanomedicine is aimed at cancer treatment to provide better options to treat cancer as opposed to chemo and radiation therapy. These cancer treatment options are not only confined to one area of the body and have side effects but are also not effective at treating cancer that has spread to other areas of the body. There are already alternative solutions such as nanomedicine applications in breast cancer treatment that have already been produced and used. For example, current state-of-the-art “[n]anomedicine products such as Doxil® and Abraxane® have already been extensively used for breast cancer adjuvant therapy with favorable clinical outcomes.”2 But researchers are still looking for more effective cancer treatments. One researched concept is to take externally and internally modified c60 molecules that can hold cancer treatments inside, detect cancerous cells and deliver the treatment more accurately without killing healthy cells. Adding to the areas of the medical field that NEMS can improve, instruments for diagnosing patients are an important tool for medical professionals. More accurate information from these instruments gives medical professionals a better understanding of the underlying issue. Scans, such as CT and PET scans, give medical professionals the information they need to care for patients. Combining these technologies results in a more accurate and informative scan than either scan by itself because having both images simultaneously and comparing the information from both scans quickly and effectively gives more information. The multicomponent capabilities of nanoparticles enable the culmination of these technologies resulting in the use of multimodality imaging in nanomedicine and nanotheranostics.3 Nanoparticles used in imaging help with scan visualization; similarly, these nanoparticles can be used to overcome the visibility issues related to dyes being used in surgeries. A variety of dyes have been used to assist in surgical operations. Dyes “such as fluorescein, indocyanine green, bromophenol blue, and Coomassie Blue [have] been attempted in brain tumor surgery.”2-8 Dyes have downsides that might outweigh their usefulness, such as difficulty in target differentiation, the need for special lighting conditions and short duration. Nanomaterials solve these issues using fluorescent nanoparticles. A research paper explains how nanoparticles can be used in this way: “conjugated iron oxide-based nanoparticles with near-infrared fluorescent dye Cy5.5 to form fluorescent nanoparticles as a new dye.”7 Due to the near-infrared that is nanoparticles give off, utilizing fluorescent nanoparticles requires a separate monitor to view the color differentiation. Another aspect of nanotechnology in the medical field is improved methods for invasive operations, most notably surgeries, as the following image shows.2 Image 1 The comparison between conventional surgical methods and nanosurgery reveals notable differences. As shown in image 1, nanosurgery covers more of the cancer tissue, is less invasive than conventional surgery and takes up less area. The research paper’s description of this image shows the process of this method very well, “a. Specific nanoparticle solution is injected around cancer tissue to improve thermal conductivity, followed by insertion of cryo-probe under image guidance. b. Super-conductive nanoparticles lower the freezing temperature and the freezing zone (dashed line) around cancer tissue when compared to conventional cryosurgery.”2 Advances in surgical equipment, whether in the instruments themselves or tools that assist in the operation, are big contributions. There have also been exciting 51
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