Nanomaterials-Based Health Care and Bioanalytical Applications: Trend and Prospects

Nanomaterials-Based Health Care and Bioanalytical Applications: Trend and Prospects

There has been a rapidly growing trend towards the use of nanomaterials (NM) in healthcare and bioanalytical sciences during the last decade. It has led to a wide range of prospective applications of NM in biosensors, diagnostics, therapeutics, drug delivery, medicine, biomedical imaging, signal enhancement, naked-eye assays, water purification and environmental monitoring. Several potential techniques have been developed for the cost-effective production, characterization, surface modification, functionalization, formation of nanocomposites and toxicity analysis of NM. The formulation of international regulatory guidelines to assess the NM toxicity is still a challenge for the scientific community and policy makers. However, it is expected that several NM-based products will be commercially-available in the coming years, after demonstrating compliance with the healthcare and bioanalytical requirements, and the nanotechnology regulatory guidelines that will be made in the next few years. We describe here the trend and prospects of highly prospective NM-based healthcare and bioanalytical applications.