ABSTRACT
Keywords: nanomedicine, nanoimaging, atomic force microscopy, AFM, DNA imaging with AFM, force spectroscopy, intermolecular interactions, protein aggregation, amyloids, a-synuclein, amyloid-b, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, protein misfolding 16.1 Introduction
Nanomedicine can be broadly defined as a branch of medicine focused on diagnosis and treatment of diseases via nanotechnology. Nanomedicine developments have advanced in two major directions. One is the development of nano-carriers for drugs to improve the pharmacokinetics of drug delivery and release processes with a focus on targeted delivery of drugs. The other is the development of novel approaches for diagnosis and treatment of diseases with the use of nanoimaging and nanomanipulation technologies. This chapter outlines a few examples of research primarily related to the
Yuri L. Lyubchenko, PhD, DSc,a Yuliang Zhang,a Alexey V. Krasnoslobodtsev, PhD,b and Jean-Christophe Rochet, PhDcaDepartment of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska, USAbDepartment of Physics, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska, USAcDepartment of MCMP, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA
second direction of nanomedicine utilizing atomic force microscopy (AFM), a fundamental technique of nanotechnology. AFM belongs to a family of scanning probe microscopy (SPM) techniques. The prototype scanning tunneling microscope instrument was conceived by Binnig and Rohrer [1], who were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1986 for this invention. AFM was invented in 1986 [2]. Its development by the Hansma group [3] resulted in the commercial production of the AFM, and as a result, the instrument has become available to the biological community. 16.2 Basic Principles of AFMFigure 16.1 illustrates the basic principles of AFM operation. A sharp AFM tip (triangle) reads the profile of the sample (bumpy profile) by scanning over the sample surface [4].
