Potential impact of nanotechnology on the control of infectious diseases.
Nanotechnology encompasses those technologies used to fabricate materials, including sphere, cubic and needle-like nanoscaled particles (approximately 5-100nm), and near-nanoscaled devices (up to micrometres). In comparison, mycoplasma are approximately 200nm in length, and a nanometre is 10(-9) of a metre. The field of nanotechnology is experiencing rapid growth, with many and diverse potential applications being explored in the biomedical field, including the control of infectious diseases. Nanotechnology not only has the potential to offer improvements to current approaches for immunisation, drug design and delivery, diagnostics and cross-infection control, but is also unexpectedly delivering many new tools and capabilities.
Allaker
Robert P
RP
Oral Microbiology, Institute of Dentistry, Queen Mary, University of London, 4 Newark Street, London E1 2AT, UK. r.p.allaker@qmul.ac.uk
Ren
Guogang
G
D003141:Communicable Diseases / Q000188:drug therapy*; D003428:Cross Infection / Q000517:prevention & control*; D016503:Drug Delivery Systems; D015195:Drug Design; D006801:Humans; D036103:Nanotechnology / Q000639:trends*
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