During the last 30 years, interest in the properties and manipulation of nanoparticles (NPs) has increased dramatically. Indeed, nanomaterials have fascinated physicists, chemists and electrical engineers since the 1970s.

The main aspects of the NPs that make them very interesting are: their chemical and physical properties differ markedly from those of the bulk solid; the dimensions of the NPs can be controlled from one to about several hundred nanometers, with a fairly narrow size distribution;also they have highly interesting optical, electronic, magnetic and catalytic properties which often depend strongly on the particle’s size and/or shape in a highly predictable way; and finally, the number of potential applications for these colloidal particles is growing rapidly because of the unique electronic structure of the nanomaterials and their extremely large surface areas. In fact, Nature has been utilizing nanostructures for billion of years. The above mentioned features and the fact that the size of nanostructures are about the size of “typical” biological objects (figure), make NPs attractive for innovative biotechnological applications. Moreover, recently developed methodologies for their surface functionalization provide materials with the final properties required for the desired application. Nowadays, nanotechnology has brought about an unprecedented variety of revolutionary approaches for the detection of biological analytes.

Biotechnological applications of nanomaterials

Novel nanomaterials are envisaged to have a major impact on a number of relevant areas. It is anticipated that within the next few years the application of nanomaterials and nanotechnology-based manufacturing will have a crucial role in medical technology. Biomedical nanotechnology presents revolutionary opportunities in the fight against diseases, such as cancer, diabetes mellitus and neurodegenerative diseases, as well as detecting microorganisms and viruses associated with infections, such as pathogenic bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Molecular imaging is also providing increasing power to studies of animal models of diseases and is beginning to be used in clinical investigations as a non-invasive means of monitoring disease progress and response to therapeutics. Molecular imaging agents will allow clinicians to detect diseases in its earliest, most treatable, pre-symtomatic stage. These advances in medical diagnostics are rivaled by the progress made in therapeutics enabled by nanotechnology. Especially in the field of cancer therapy promising applications are being developed. Several novel NPs will respond to externally applied physical stimuli in ways that make them suitable therapeutics or therapeutic delivery systems. Nanomolecular diagnostics is the use of nanobiotechnology in molecular diagnostics. Numerous nanodevices and nanosystems for sequencing single molecules are feasible. Given the inherent nanoscale of receptors, pores, and other functional components of living cells, the detailed monitoring and analysis of these components will be made possible by the development of a new class of nanoscale probes. Because of the small dimensions, most of the applications of nanobiotechnology in molecular diagnostics fall under the broad category of biochips/microarrays but are more correctly termed nanochips and nanoarrays. Nanotechnology-on-a-chip is a general description that can be applied to several methods. Some of these do not use nanotechnologies but merely have the capability to analyze nanoliter amounts of fluids. Molecular diagnostic technologies are used in biological research, detection of bioterrorism agents, clinical diagnostics, drug discovery and development, as well as in monitoring of treatment including novel methods such as gene therapy and RNA interference. Molecular diagnostics is an essential part of the development of personalized medicine where some diagnostic procedures are performed at the point-of-care.