ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how nanobiotechnologies and nanostructured materials can be exploited in the field of medicine and public health, addressing several issues such as water and food safety and specifically the design and development of new vaccines. Water and food safety are two important and strongly interwoven topics in public health and represent big challenges to face due to increasing demand, population growth, climate change, and scarcity of the supplies. Nanotechnology and nanoscale devices can be a solution for these issues. In this chapter, we review potential application of anodic porous alumina (APA) in the field of public health: APA-enhanced water ultrafiltration seems to be a promising technique for having clean and fresh water, which is essential for human health, and APA-nanosensor seems to be
a useful tool to detect and remove pathogens both in food and in water. Moreover, we envisage and address the potential applications of APA in the field of vaccinology.
