People who are diagnosed with cancer often times have to undergo chemotherapy, which includes taking drugs with painful side effects. According to an article on Ivanhoe.com called "Medicine's Next Big Thing: Nanomedicine", scientists are taking a more powerful approach in dealing with cancer. Nanomedicine is an offspring of nanotechnology.

One woman interviewed for the article found out she had breast cancer. She had a double mastectomy and chemotherapy. She had to endure the side effects of nausea, weight gain, and exhaustion. The bad part of chemotherapy, besides the side effects, is that in the process of killing cancer cells, healthy cells are also killed.

Dr. Ferrari, director of the Center for NanoMedicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center, is using part of research of nanotechnology to attack cancer differently. There is a new drug delivery system of nanocarriers 100 times smaller than a strand of hair that are injected into the blood stream. These nanocarriers carry the drug directly to the cancer and the goal is to not damage anything else in the process.

There are some doctors in Germany even using nanotechnology. They are treating tumors and prostate cancer. Tiny particles are injected into the tumor and its cells and a magnetic field heats and destroys the cancer.

This article also had a research summary link with a little more detail. It describes various stages of the drug delivery system talked about earlier in this blog.

Nanomedicine isn't stopping with cancer. They hope to treat heart disease and many other diseases. I'm sure they will be successful in this endeavor.

It never fails to amaze me with all the medical advancements we have. I was relatively familiar with nanotechnology, but the nanomedicine side is new. I think it is great that research has found a better way to treat cancer patients.

Cancer patients and their families are so greatly affected by this disease. With these medical breakthroughs, it has to make the prospect of dealing with this disease much more promising and maybe less scary and uncertain. I wonder how widely used this treatment has been used or when they will be done with the testing state. The sooner they can get it approved, the better. I applaud our researchers who are continually working to improve our medical technology.