Nanosensors and Their Pharmaceuticals Use

Nanosensors and their
pharmaceuticals use
Introduction
• Nanotechnology stands to produce significant scientific and technological advances in
diverse fields including medicine and physiology.
• Defined as the science and engineering involved in the design, synthesis, characteristic, and
application of materials and devices whose smallest functional unit is on nanometer scale.
• For applications to medicine and physiology, these materials and devices can be designed to
interact with cells and tissues at a molecular (i.e., subcellular) level with a high functional
specificity, allowing a degree of integration between technology and biological systems which
was not attained previously.
• Biosensors: One of the most largely funded areas of research in nanosensors is biosensors.
This is mostly due to the possibilities that this technology could lead to the early cancer
detection and detection of other various diseases. The biosensors can also be used to detect
specific types of DNA. The sensors are created from synthetic polymers called dendrimers
and are created layer-by-layer into spheres with a diameter of less than five nanometers. It is
because of their small size that the goal of these sensors is to be able to administer them
trans dermally, through the skin.
Nanofibrication
• The fabrication of reproducible optical nanofibre sensors is critical for their successful
development. The two common techniques for fabricating the nanofibre tips have been
used are;-
1. The heat-and-pull method, consists of pulling nanotips from a larger diameter (600 Am)
silica optical fibre using a special fibre-pulling device. This procedure involves local
heating of a glass fibre using a CO2 laser or a heat filament and subsequently pulling the
fibre apart. The resulting tip shapes depend mainly on experimental parameters, such as
the temperature and the timing of the procedure. One end of a 600-µm silica/silica fibre
is polished to a 0.3-µm finish using an Ultratec fibre polisher to produce an even, flat
surface to couple optical fibre delivering laser excitation light. The fibre is then fixed into
the fibrepulling device and the laser heating source is focused onto the median point of
the fibre. The optical fibre is then pulled to the breaking point, thus producing two fibres
with nanosized tip diameters.
2. The second fabrication method is based on chemical etching of glass fibres. A variation
of the standard etching scheme has been introduced; in this variation the taper is
formed inside the polymer cladding of the glass fibres and so on using Cooke Vacuum
Evaporator and so on follow the process to manufacture the nanofibre sensor.
Applications of Nanosensors:-
• Glucose Monitoring
One of the main reasons for developing in vivo glucose sensors is the detection of
hypoglycemia in people with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes.
Asthma Detection
• A nano-biosensor that can be used to detect asthma attacks up to three weeks before they
happen just by using a handheld device to test the nitric oxide level in the patients breath.
• By knowing the nitric oxide level in their breath they could be alerted if the level were too
high, or were increasing. This would indicate the risk of an asthma attack in the patient.
• Nanotechnology can be utilized in the development of new drugs for neutrophilic
asthma. There are many potential small molecules that can effectively decrease
neutrophilic inflammation. However, due to poor water-solubility, candidate molecule
cannot be delivered to the tissue. Nanotechnology can be employed to overcome this
problem. By formulating candidate molecule as nanoparticle, deposition of drug can
be improved.
• Nanotechnology can be utilized in the development of new drugs for neutrophilic
asthma. There are many potential small molecules that can effectively decrease
neutrophilic inflammation. However, due to poor water-solubility, candidate molecule
cannot be delivered to the tissue. Nanotechnology can be employed to overcome this
problem. By formulating candidate molecule as nanoparticle, deposition of drug can
be improved.

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