ABSTRACT
Nanosize materials in medicine raise hope and chances for new and more efcient treatments. The term “ nanomedicine” is, however, far away from being well dened. The eld of medicine is wide, and the word “nano” is not necessarily taken literal. Thus, even European and U.S. scientic organizations use different denitions shown in Table 8.1. In this chapter, we will try to focus on those aspects, which are covered more or less by both denitions, and we will restrict our outline to those tools that are advanced in development. Further, the multiplicity of diseases and the numerous tools make the number of potential applications astronomical and detailed description would exceed the volume of an entire book. The numerous possible combinations of tools make it likely that we forgot important aspects for which we apologize. In the following paragraphs, we would like to reect some general aspects of nanomedicine, giving some examples for existing therapies or clinical trials.
