Nanotechnology offers brand new horizons for drug development with scientific advancements being made daily. Companies may still face market and regulatory hurdles, however, when developing the latest nanomedicines.
Nanotechnology has, until recently, been a horizon issue for the pharmaceutical industry. Public focus has lain elsewhere – on novel foods and electronic devices. But nanomedicine was brought to prominence in July 2011, with the news that a patient received a new windpipe grown from a nanomaterial-based tissue scaffold, seeded with the patient’s own stem cells.
Scientists at Karolinska University hospital in Sweden used an organ wholly grown in a laboratory on a nanocomposite polymer frame. The polymer material had a nanostructure seeded with stem cells, creating a bio-polymer composite with better elasticity, strength and versatility and formulated to encourage cell growth and remove the risk of tissue rejection.
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