This special issue contains contributions from the broad interdisciplinary fields of bionanotechnology and nanomedicine. Nanotechnology has great promise in biology and medicine. This includes new approaches to fundamental studies, improved methods for detection of protein or nucleic acid-based biomarkers of disease, and new ways to administer drugs or vaccines or enhancing their effects. The t...

A crucial step towards the goal of tissue engineering a heart valve will be the choice of scaffold onto which an appropriate cell phenotype can be seeded. Successful scaffold materials should be amenable to modification, have a controlled degradation, be compatible with the cells, lack cytotoxicity and not elicit an immune or inflammatory response. In addition, the scaffold should induce approp...

In recent years, there has been considerable research in preparing materials and finding new uses for nanoscale structures in drug delivery. Uses such as carriers for controlled and targeted drug delivery, micropatterned devices, systems for biological recognition, have shown the versatility of these biopolymeric materials [1]. We report on major new developments of recognitive drug delivery sy...

November 9-11, 2003 Kyoto, JAPAN Organized by The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology -0322 Embassy of Sweden, Science & Technology Office Sweden-Japan Workshop on Bionanotechnology November 10-11, 2003 Kyoto Kokusai Hotel in Kyoto Masuo Aizawa, President, Tokyo Institute of Technology 1 Bio-Nanotechnology Progress in Japan La...

At present, technical hurdles remain in probing biochemical processes in living cells and organisms at nanometre spatial resolution, millisecond time resolution and with high specificity and single-molecule sensitivity. Owing to its unique shape, size and electrical properties, the nanopipette has been used to obtain high-resolution topographic images of live cells under physiological condition...

Biomolecular engineering can be used to purposefully manipulate biomolecules, such as peptides, proteins, nucleic acids and lipids, within the framework of the relations among their structures, functions and properties, as well as their applicability to such areas as developing novel biomaterials, biosensing, bioimaging, and clinical diagnostics and therapeutics. Nanotechnology can also be used...