Pharmacogenomics and Nanotechnology Toward Advancing Personalized Medicine

Nanomedicine and personalised medicine: understanding the personalisation of health care in the molecular era

Globally supported by public policy and investment, nanomedicine is presented as an ongoing medical revolution that will radically change the practice of health care from diagnostic to therapeutic, and everything in between. One of nanomedicine's major promises is that of personalised medicine, enabling diagnostics and therapeutics tailored to individual needs and developing a truly 'patient-friendly' medical approach. Based on qualitative interviews with nanomedicine researchers in Canada, this article explores the emerging concept of personalised medicine as it becomes entangled with nanomedical research. More precisely, drawing on insights from science studies and the sociology of expectations, it analyses researchers' perceptions of personalised medicine in the cutting edge of current nanomedicine research. Two perceptions of personalisation are identified; a molecular conception of individuality and a technical conception of personalisation. The article concludes by examining the relationship between the two conceptions and contrasts them with the normative reflex of a more expansive conception of personalised medicine.

A prospective overview of the essential requirements in molecular modeling for nanomedicine design

Nanotechnology has presented many new challenges and opportunities in the area of nanomedicine design. The issues related to nanoconjugation, nanosystem-mediated targeted drug delivery, transitional stability of nanovehicles, the integrity of drug transport, drug-delivery mechanisms and chemical structural design require a pre-estimated and determined course of assumptive actions with property and characteristic estimations for optimal nanomedicine design. Molecular modeling in nanomedicine encompasses these pre-estimations and predictions of pertinent design data via interactive computographic software. Recently, an increasing amount of research has been reported where specialized software is being developed and employed in an attempt to bridge the gap between drug discovery, materials science and biology. This review provides an assimilative and concise incursion into the current and future strategies of molecular-modeling applications in nanomedicine design and aims to describe the utilization of molecular models and theoretical-chemistry computographic techniques for expansive nanomedicine design and development.