ABSTRACT
The era of molecular medicine is providing new insights into the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer. Exciting advances in technology have elicited a new discipline called nanotechnology that will also have a major impact on clinical cancer diagnosis and treatment. Nanotechnology is the ability to control, modify, and fabricate materials, structures, and devices with nanometer precision. It is the synthesis of such structures into systems of micro-and macroscopic dimensions. It encompasses the understanding of fundamental physics, chemistry, biology, and technology of nanometer-scale objects. It includes how such objects can be used in the areas of computation, sensors, structure, and biotechnology. The definition is used loosely. Small is big. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. In general, molecules measure approximately one nanometer in diameter. A nanometer is small. It is the equivalent of ten hydrogen atoms placed side by side. It is one thousandth the size of a bacterium. It is one millionth the diameter of the head of a pin. The term nanotechnology may be used incorrectly in some instances. Investigators have used it to mean structure and fabrication at the micron scale. A micron is one millionth of a meter, which is a thousand times larger than a nanometer. Also in some cases, nanotechnology may not be technology. Rather it involves basic research on structures having at least one dimension of about one to several hundred nanometers.
