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What is Nanomedicine and When Can I Start Getting It?

By crooky | April 7, 2008

I’ve talked about nanotechnology in the past on this blog and a recent article in Science Daily about nanomedicine reminded me that I haven’t talked about this at all yet. One thing that you might not know about the pills that your doctor prescribes you is that they’re often a much, much higher dosage than your body needs. Now before you get mad at your doctor and start taking honey in your tea instead (not a big fan of naturalpaths, myself), you have to realize that your doctor is not intentionally doing this to you - they don’t have a choice.

Medicine works like a chemical reaction on living organisms. Fire, for example, is a chemical reaction. If you have a liter of gasoline in a metal can about the size of a 1L milk carton and you light the top on fire, you’re going to get a little flame dancing on the top. If you take that same liter of gasoline and throw it on my living room floor and light it, you’re going to have a big fire and probably a beating from me.

The difference isn’t the amount of gasoline - it’s the surface area that reacts to the chemical reaction. In an open container, gasoline doesn’t explode when you light it. It needs oxygen to start the reaction (aka air). Medicine is no different. When you swallow a pill, it’s only the outside layers of the pill that react in your body.

Now, I’m no doctor so I may have this wrong but… I think the problem with pills is that sometimes, the pill can make it through your stomach and small intestine without completely disolving. As your stomach acid peels layers off the pill, it exposes new layers of the medicine which can then be absorbed into your bloodstream - where you want it.

Along comes nanomedicine. Nanomedicine can take a normal medication, wrap it in thin layers around say… a nanoscale drop of digestable starch and then introduce these particles into your bloodstream. Why would you want to do that? The surface area to medicine ratio for these particles is much greater than what your doctor can give you in a pill format, making it easier for your body to absorb them.

The result? A dose of medicine that is 1000 times smaller than what your doctor would have to give you in a pill format and just as effective. This has some profound implications for all kinds of medicines which, in higher doses can cause your body to become resistant to them or other side effects.

My guess is that we’re less than ten years away from having real applications for nanomedicine and it will be a breakthrough for many patients.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology

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