Nanomedicine: towards early diagnosis, personalised treatment and precision medicine

The minimally invasive early detection of illnesses, their immediate treatment at a personalised level and the subsequent monitoring of their evolution are the main challenges we are facing in medicine in the 21^st century. Current diagnoses require new tools that can provide almost instantaneous, precise results with minimum inconvenience to the patient. Early identification produces a rapid response capacity and the immediate application of the specific treatment, thereby giving the patient higher chances of recovery.

The important advances being made in the field of nanomedicine mean that this need is now becoming a reality thanks to the development of biosensor nanodevices and point-of-care, and their convergence with latest generation smart phones and nanotherapeutic systems. Nanoparticles have already been developed that can recognise, detect and selectively destroy cancer cells, in addition to nanosensors that are able to detect, in drops of biological fluid, extremely low amounts of molecules that reveal the onset of cancer or other diseases. Point-of-care devices can measure the patient’s state of health and transmit this information directly to the medical staff, without altering the patient’s normal life. There is no doubt that nanomedicine will continue to surprise us with advances that will result in an improvement in the quality of life of our ageing society, and will help to solve the problems caused by the main diseases, namely cancer, neurodegenerative disorders and cardiovascular diseases.

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