ABSTRACT
Nanomedicine is the application of nanotechnology to medicine. The word ‘nano’ is taken from the Greek word nanos or dwarf which means one-billionth 10-9 of something. Nanomedicine utilizes nano-sized materials/tools for the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of disease so as to gain better knowledge of the complex pathophysiology of disease (Freitas 2005). Nanomedicine can also be defi ned as the comprehensive monitoring, control, construction, repair, defense and improvement of all human biological systems at the molecular level using engineered nanodevices and nanostructures (Morrow et al. 2007). Nanomedicine exploits nano-tools to provide speed and high performance for elucidating the complex biological phenomenon. Nanomedicine technologies include dendrimers,carbon fullerenes (buckyballs), nanoshells, quantum dots etc., to target specifi c bio-molecules (Patil et al. 2008). The most advanced form of nanomedicine technologies are nanorobots and nanoinstruments. These nanomedicine technologies are still at the developmental stage.
