Nanomaterials in Biology and Medicine:  Promises and Perils

Organized by Robert Austin

This meeting was held on April 10-11, 2007 at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.  Audio recordings and slides from the presentations are being made available as they are approved.

View Presentations

For information on the April 10, 2007 Sackler Lecture featuring Dr. George Whitesides please click here

Meeting Overview
There has been an explosive development in materials development which uses nanoscale materials to probe biological processes and diagnose medical conditions (such as tumor detection). There are unique aspects of  nanoscale materials which allow them to preferentially penetrate and be retained by biological cells and tissue and there have been developments in new ways to detect and image and  nanomaterials in cells and biological tissue.  Further, the size scale of nanoprobes will allow us to build complexity into nanoprobes which allow them to be multi-functional, with both diagnostic and drug delivery.  However, we must also be aware that these nanomaterials can have drastically different behavior in biological tissue than larger scale materials of exactly the same composition, so issues of societal and ethical outcomes must also be considered.  The colloquium will be structured to address graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, directors of public granting agencies, and policy makers.