Nanomedicine In Focus: Opportunities and Challenges Ahead

Nanomedicine has emerged during the past decades to promise extraordinary breakthroughs in a wide range of diagnostic and therapeutic endeavours. Understanding and controlling the interfacial interactions of nanomaterials with biological entities such as soluble and insoluble proteins, biological membranes, and genetic materials are of paramount importance towards their successful implementation in medical applications. This special ‘Nanomedicine’ In Focus issue of Biointerphases illustrates the way exquisite control of the unique physicochemical properties of nanoscaled materials and advanced understanding of their bio-interfacial activity are rapidly translating into medically relevant applications as diverse as regenerative medicine, molecular imaging, molecular diagnosis, and targeted therapy. One review article included in this special edition focuses on stimuli responsive polymers and their application in nanomedicine. The review by Palivan and coworkers describes in particular the different types of stimuli responsive materials and how their integration in biomedical devices bears some exciting promises towards advances in fields as diverse as drug delivery, biodiagnostics, cell culture and tissue engineering, or biosensing [Stimuli-responsive polymers and their applications in nanomedicine]. Along with this exciting review, an innovative application of light responsive materials is presented by Boyd, Hanley and collaborators (Fong et al.) [Alkylation of spiropyran moiety provides reversible photo-control over nanostructured soft materials for drug delivery]. In this work, photochromic spiropyran moieties are used to