IS NANOMEDICINE the next big thing? A growing number of top drug companies seem to think so.
The ability to encapsulate potent drugs in tiny particles measuring billionths of a metre in diameter is opening up new options for super-accurate drug delivery, increasing precision hits at the site of disease with, hopefully, fewer side effects.
Three deals struck this year by privately held Bind Therapeutics, together worth nearly $1bn if experiments are successful, highlight a new interest in using such tiny carriers to deliver drug payloads to specific locations in the body.
US-based Bind is one of several biotechnology firms that are luring large pharmaceutical makers with a range of smart drug nanotechnologies, notably against cancer.
And nanomedicine is also being put to work in diagnosis, with tiny particles used to improve imaging in scanners, as well as rapidly detecting some serious infections.
In future, researchers hope to combine both treatment and diagnostics in a new approach dubbed "theranostics" that would allow doctors to monitor patients via their medicines.
After much hype but limited clinical success, scientists in the nanotechnology field finally see a turning point. "We have been hearing about the promise of nanomedicine for a long time, but it is now really starting to move," says Dr Dan Peer, who runs a nanomedicine laboratory at Tel Aviv University.
"There is a new level of confidence in this approach among the big pharmaceutical companies ... We will see more and more products in clinical testing over the next few years and I think that is very exciting."
Nanoparticles made of polymers, gold and even graphene a newly-discovered form of carbon are now in various stages of development. In cancer alone, 117 drugs are being assessed using nanoparticle formulations, though most have yet to be tried on patients.
Other potential applications include treatments for inflammatory disorders, heart and brain diseases, and pain.
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Big drugmakers think small