This book discusses emerging nanotechnology-based tools that have the potential to dramatically impact cancer research, diagnostics, and treatment. Cancer is a complex, devastating, and debilitating disease and, although much progress has been made, novel, more effective diagnostic and treatment options are still needed, especially for advanced cancers. The ultimate goal is to detect cancer early and non-invasively and to provide efficacious and targeted precision treatments that cause fewer harmful side effects. This book explains how nanotechnology can exploit the size-, shape-, and composition-dependent properties of nanomaterials to provide novel tools for precision cancer medicine. It will be of interest to researchers and professionals working in the fields of chemistry, biology, materials science and engineering, and medicine who want to learn more about this fascinating and fast-paced area of research.

This volume presents a comprehensive perspective on the global scientific, technological, and societal impact of nanotechnology since 2000, and explores the opportunities and research directions in the next decade to 2020. The vision for the future of nanotechnology presented here draws on scientific insights from U.S. experts in the field, examinations of lessons learned, and international perspectives shared by participants from 35 countries in a series of high-level workshops organized by Mike Roco of the National Science Foundation (NSF), along with a team of American co-hosts that includes Chad Mirkin, Mark Hersam, Evelyn Hu, and several other eminent U.S. scientists. The study performed in support of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) aims to redefine the R&D goals for nanoscale science and engineering integration and to establish nanotechnology as a general-purpose technology in the next decade. It intends to provide decision makers in academia, industry, and government with a nanotechnology community perspective of productive and responsible paths forward for nanotechnology R&D.

This book discusses emerging nanotechnology-based tools that have the potential to dramatically impact cancer research, diagnostics, and treatment. Cancer is a complex, devastating, and debilitating disease and, although much progress has been made, novel, more effective diagnostic and treatment options are still needed, especially for advanced cancers. The ultimate goal is to detect cancer early and non-invasively and to provide efficacious and targeted precision treatments that cause fewer harmful side effects. This book explains how nanotechnology can exploit the size-, shape-, and composition-dependent properties of nanomaterials to provide novel tools for precision cancer medicine. It will be of interest to researchers and professionals working in the fields of chemistry, biology, materials science and engineering, and medicine who want to learn more about this fascinating and fast-paced area of research.

Spherical nucleic acids (SNAs) comprise a nanoparticle core and a densely packed and highly oriented nucleic acid shell, typically DNA or RNA. They have novel architecture-dependent properties that distinguish them from all other forms of nucleic acids and make them useful in materials synthesis, catalysis, diagnostics, therapeutics, and optics/plasmonics. This book covers over two decades of Dr. Mirkin's research on SNAs and their anisotropic analogues, including synthesis and fundamental properties, and applications in colloidal crystallization, adaptive matter, and nanomedicine, spanning extra- and intracellular diagnostics, gene regulation, and immunomodulation. It is a reprint volume that compiles 101 key papers from high-impact journals in this research area published by the Mirkin Group at Northwestern University, Illinois, USA, within the International Institute for Nanotechnology, and collaborators. Volume 1 provides an overview and a historical framework of engineering matter from DNA-modified constructs and discusses the enabling features of nucleic acid-functionalized nanomaterials. Volume 2 covers design rules for colloidal crystallization, building blocks for crystal engineering, and DNA and RNA as programmable bonds. Volume 3 discusses colloidal crystallization processes and routes to hierarchical assembly, dynamic nanoparticle superlattices, surface-based and template-confined colloidal crystallization, optics and plasmonics with nanoparticle superlattices, and postsynthetic modification and catalysis with nanoparticle superlattices. Volume 4 covers diagnostic modalities, and intracellular therapeutic and diagnostic schemes based upon nucleic acid-functionalized nanomaterials.