Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Quantum Dot Imaging of Neural
Cells and Tissue
Tania Q. Vu and Sujata Sundara Rajan
1
Introduction
Nanomedicine is an emerging fi eld of science and technology that integrates bio-
logical, chemical, and engineering sciences and holds promise for the creation of
nanometer-sized scale approaches for studying biological systems in health and dis-
ease. While biologists, biochemists, and biophysicists have long been interested in
biomolecular phenomena and cellular ultrastructure at the nanometer scale, advances
in atomic scale visualization technology in the past few decades have motivated
focused interest in understanding and manipulating synthetic and biomaterials at the
molecular level. Nanomedicine, the application of nanotechnology to solving health
problems, seeks to establish tools and techniques that provide easy accessibility to
the interior of cells, facilitates molecular scale interaction with cellular signaling
cascades, and increases detection sensitivity and targeting at the single-molecule
level. Through the development of materials that exhibit novel optical, chemical,
and electrical properties at the nanometer-sized scale, it is hoped that it will be pos-
sible to probe, study, and transform molecular cell processes to further understand
fundamental biological processes and to improve therapies for disease.
The fi eld of nanoparticle synthesis, assembly, and application to biology is a fast
growing area of nanotechnology and nanomedicine (Niemeyer 2001 ; Penn et al.
2003 ; Salata 2004 ). Nanoparticles are one of the earliest and most prevalent areas of
nanomedicine research and work in this area is entering a period of rapid investiga-
tion along with signifi cant commercial interest for development of therapeutics
(West and Halas 2003 ; Salata 2004 ). Nanoparticle spheres, rods, and cylinders
(1-100 nm) measure on the same size scale as proteins and other biomolecules and
possess high surface-to-volume ratios. These two traits imply that nanoparticles
T . Q . V u ( * ) • S. Sundara Rajan
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Oregon Health & Sciences University,
Portland , OR , USA
e-mail: vuta@ohsu.edu
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