Nanoinformatics: Developing Advanced Informatics Applications for Nanomedicine - Intracellular Delivery: Fundamentals and Applications - page 855

provide an adequate basis for characterizing diverse nanosytems' physicochemical
properties. In this subfield, several simulations of nanoparticles and other nanosys-
tems suggest the suitability of these computer-based techniques to explore and
understand basic chemical and biological properties of nanoparticles and nanoma-
terials (Khurana et al. 2006 ). These tools can be used not only to model basic
nanoparticle properties, but also to gain insight into specific interactions with
biological systems. The application of computer-intensive methods like hybrid
quantum mechanics and molecular mechanics (QM/MM) simulations, augmented
with algorithms that efficiently sample the vast conformational space, will facilitate
the characterization of a large number of nanoparticle properties, obtaining
additional information about the biological phenomena that explains nanoparticle
recognition by physiological systems (Archakov and Ivanov 2007 ). In this regard,
this type of approach needs several different layers of structural modelling and
collaborative sharing to accelerate both research and translation.
Molecular modeling and simulations facilitate exploring interactions at different
scales. Through these simulations, one can study the fundamental physicochemical
properties of nanoparticles. High performance computing infrastructures—like Grid,
Cloud Computing or dedicated supercomputers facilitate this work considerably.

4.9 Terminologies and Standards

Various challenging issues arise in trying to understand standard syntax, semantics,
and the pragmatics of design, development and practical use in the field of different
application-focused and generic clinical terminologies. In this regard, standards and
terminologies like HL7, LOINC, SNOMED, DICOM and others will have to be
extended to include nano-related information that address the requirements of this
new field. In BMI, for instance, the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS)
was able to incorporate genomic information (like Gene Ontology), going beyond
the original, medically-focused information. In this regard, standards like HL7 have
introduced new approaches to incorporate genomic models and information in its
recent releases. Similarly, nanomedicine might lead to new approaches and future
versions of current standards. Important examples are the ISA-TAB standards and
their extension to nano in Nano-TAB.

4.10 Translational Nanoinformatics and Biomedicine

As we have earlier stated (Kulikowski and Kulikowski 2009 ), translational bioin-
formatics aims to translate basic research in the -omics areas into new knowledge
that can provide, for instance, personalized medical diagnosis and therapy for
patients, taking into account the complexity of genetic and environmental interac-
tions in human diseases. In a similar way, Nanomedicine requires novel insights