Small and mighty

Nanotechnology has the potential to radically improve our everyday lives - whether by revolutionising the way we receive life-saving medicines, or by dramatically increasing the speed at which a tumour can be treated.

The origins of nanotechnology, or nanoscience, date back to 1959 when US physicist Richard Feynman gave a talk to the American Physical Society entitled: ’There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom’.

Though the term ’nanotechnology’ was not coined until a decade after Feynman’s talk, it was the driving force behind much of his work.

Now, more than half a century later, nanotechnology is widely considered the disruptive science that will forcibly eradicate previous, less effective technologies.

In terms of size, a single sheet of newspaper measures roughly 100,000 nanometres thick.

What scientists stress as equally important as its size, however, is the reactive nature of a nanomaterials’ surface.

Nanomaterials such as graphene possess outstanding mechanical, thermal and electrical properties, and boast a density half that of aluminium - making it useful in the construction of some sports equipment (see image).

“You can send electrical signals using graphene far faster than you can with other materials

Senior lecturer David Carey

Senior lecturer in electronic engineering at the University of Surrey David Carey says: “Graphene has mechanical properties that exceed Young’s Modulus which exceeds almost all known materials, making it extremely light.”

For Carey, at the university’s new graphene centre, which forms part of its wider Advanced Technology Institute (ATI), there is a strong interest in the characterisation of high-frequency materials.

“You can send electrical signals using graphene far faster than you can with other materials, and that is why graphene within high-speed electronic equipment is becoming increasingly sought after,” Carey says.

“A really good example of that is within antennas. If you make a mobile phone antenna smaller and smaller, the electrical losses get bigger and bigger. But if you use graphene, those losses do not happen.”

Perhaps most fascinating, however, is the potential to use nanomaterials such as graphene within advanced drug delivery, as an aid to nanomedicine.

Carey says that patients often get extremely sick from chemotherapy drugs because they are powerful medicines that spread throughout the body, rather than being constrained to a more localised area.

“If you can coat your vessel, such as a carbon nanotube, so those drugs only go to a tumour, then the patient has to consume far less medicine and therefore they don’t have such bad side-effects,” Carey says.

“Through this method, patients [can] recover far better and far more quickly.”

For Johnathan Aylott, associate professor in analytical bioscience at the Nottingham Nanotechnology & Nanoscience Centre (NNNC), however, nanomedicine technologies can sometimes fail as they cannot effectively manipulate the intelligent defence mechanisms inherent within our cellular structures.

“If you have a nanoparticle entering a cell, the cell works well to process it and get it contained and out the other side, which is why people talk about [how effective] nanotechnology can be in the delivery of drugs,” Aylott says.

“There are very few good examples of this technology currently on the market, however.”

To combat this, Aylott says researchers are engineering nanoparticles that effectively disguise themselves.

“With stealth nanoparticles, the idea is to trick the body into not realising what this ’thing’ is so it can deliver the drug effectively,” Aylott says.

Though Aylott admits there is huge potential for the use of stealth nanoparticles, knowing how these particles are processed and trafficked in the body unfortunately remains a barrier.

Yet, in developing our understanding of the human body even further, scientists are attempting to reimagine relatively modern processes using advances in nanoscience.

Professor Nicholas Long of Imperial College London’s (ICL) department of chemistry says his research into self-assembling nanoparticles centres on radically increasing the sensitivity of the contrast agents used in imaging applications.

“As long as we can persuade enough people that we have a good idea, we get to push the boundaries of what’s out there

NNNC associate professor Johnathan Aylott

“MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is brilliant in terms of showing very clearly defined images, but you need to use a lot of contrast agent to give you enough signal, and some of the commonly used agents are very toxic,” Long says.

To counter this, Long, alongside researchers at ICL, has developed a protein-coated iron-oxide nanoparticle designed to aid tumour diagnosis.

“Iron-oxide nanoparticles are attractive because they have some inherent magnetic behaviour. And, as far as we know, they are benign, as opposed to other contrast agents,” he says.

Long says when using iron-oxide nanoparticles, a more powerful signal and a clearer MRI image of the tumours his team attempted to scan was produced.

Looking ahead, the main objective of Long’s research is to adapt the technology for use in human clinical trials.

“That’s the big goal for us. We need to do further animal work before we can move to human trials, but assuming they work well, we can apply for further funding [and start testing in humans],” Long says.

In an ideal world, Long says this treatment could be available within 10 years, depending on the outcome of more rigorous testing.

Fortunately, our understanding and acceptance of nanotechnology is gaining pace, and in the last decade especially, investment in the nano-sciences has benefited from some major monetary boosts.

“As long as we can persuade enough people that we have a good idea, we get to push the boundaries of what’s out there,” says Aylott.

Though nanotechnology deals in the realms of the almost unfathomably small, and can often only make incremental progress, given the right circumstances, and continued support, its potential to radicalise our everyday lives certainly seems mighty.