Nanoinformatics: Developing Advanced Informatics Applications for Nanomedicine - Intracellular Delivery: Fundamentals and Applications - page 851

2.4 Therapy

Nanotechnology allows for therapies that are less invasive for the patient and usually
require lower dosage levels than conventional drugs. By improving therapeutic
efficacy they can help reduce the toxic effect of drugs. And, nanoparticles can be
designed to have their own therapeutic properties including those which are anti-
bacterial (Thomas et al. 2009 ) or antimicrobial (Chamundeeswari et al. 2009 ). To
test their efficacy and potential secondary effects new models of nano-clinical trials
must be designed. Similar efforts have been already carried out to design clinical-
genomic trials (Anguita et al. 2008 ). New models of computerized clinical practice
guidelines can be adapted to nanomedicine. This area, therapy, would also have to
bring in antimicrobial and antibacterial information—as well as help to design trials
that can identify and compensate for individual reactions to these pathogens and
help generate the needed clinical guidelines.

3 Materials

Studies of the biological interactions between specific nanostructures (such as
dendrimers) and cell physiology are needed to help in the design of new nanomedical
techniques. New biocompatible materials can be also used in implants for replace-
ment therapies and in regenerative medicine.

4 Nanoinformatics: Areas of Research and Development

Given its novelty, Nanoinformatics is a potential discipline which has yet to be fully
defined. Computers have been used for many aspects of nanotechnological research,
but the field still needs a better specification of goals, subfields, topics and educa-
tional requirements, which could help lead to more concrete agendas for research
and development. We can consider nanoinformatics to be the ideal way to integrate
various areas of research and translation in a reasonable timeframe. Nanotechnology
offers the hope of developing and testing these systems now so that we develop a
rational method of expanding them as our knowledge grows.
Even at this early stage we can suggest some specific nanoinformatics areas of
investigation as follows:

4.1 Ontologies and Semantic Search

Biomedical ontologies describe concepts or classes—for instance, organisms, organs,
cells, molecules, etc.—with their associated properties and semantic relationships.
They have contributed to the development of various significant approaches towards