The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research. The NIH’s mission is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and to apply that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce the burdens of illness and disability. In support of this mission, the NIH has recently invested approximately $990 million since 2013 in nanotechnology research that has the potential to make valuable contributions in biology and medicine. This investment is bringing about fundamental changes to the study and understanding of biological processes in health and disease, as well as enabling novel diagnostics and interventions for treating disease. NIH scientists are developing new molecular agents and methods to enable earlier and more accurate diagnosis and treatment monitoring, therapies aimed directly and selectively at diseased cells, and exploring root causes at the proper length scales of common and rare diseases. Work is currently underway to move these research tools and devices into clinical practice and to turn the promise of personalized therapy (i.e., where a patient receives a drug based on the genetic and molecular characteristics of his or her particular disease type) into reality. This presentation will highlight recent basic and clinical research developments in nanotechnology that impact the diagnosis, treatment, or overall management of diseases and patient care.

National Institutes of Health: The impact of nanotechnology in biology and medicine

249th National Meeting (2015)

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